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31

THE HIBBERT LECTURES,

1881.

THE HIBBERT LECTURES, iSSi.

LECTURES

ON THE

ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF RELIGION

AS ILLUSTRATED BY SOME POINTS IN THBS
HISTORY OF

INDIAN BUDDHISM.

BY

T. W. EHYS DAYIDS.

FOUBTH EDITION

WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14, HENBIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON.

1906.
[All rights reserved.]

lONDON :

O. NORMAN AND SON, PRENTEUS, n.ORAL STREET,

COVKNT GARDKN.

LECTURE I.

THE PLACE OF BUDDHISM m THE DEYE-
LOPEMENT OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT.

Right and Wrong- Uses of the Comparative Study of

Rehgious Beliefs.

It would be a hojDeless task to attempt in six Lec-
tures, that is to say, in six hours, to give any adequate
account of that great movement which has influenced
the greater portion of the human race during the lapse
of so many centuries. It is therefore matter for con-
gratulation that the task allotted to us is a much lighter
one, — to discuss those points in the history of Bud-
dhism which appear likely to throw light on the origin
and growth of religious belief. This means, as I un-
derstand it, the origin and growth of religion outside,
as well as inside, the circle of the Buddhist beliefs
themselves. What we have to do is, in a word, to
apply a particular method, the comparative method,
to the study of the facts revealed to us by the history
of Buddhism.

2 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

There is indeed a way of comparing religions one
with another which leads to mere truisms, or even to
erroneous conclusions. It is not uncommon, even now,
to find such comparisons made with the object of
evoking interest in other religions than our own, by
showing that they teach some things which are also
held among us. The Singhalese have an epithet which
they apply in good-humoured sarcasm to Europeans,
and which means "fellows with, hats, hat fellows"
(Toppi-karayo). These felloAvs with the hats, and
eighty-ton guns, and other signs of artistic and spiritual
pre-eminence, are sometimes gifted with a sublime and
admirable self-complacency which leads them to be
surprised when they find fundamental truths of moral-
ity, or good sense in philosophy, taught among peoples
who are not white and who go bare-headed. And
being thus surprised, they are led to produce any evi-
dence of such things, as if they were remarkable and
interesting phenomena.

I beg to deprecate very strongly the study of other
religions than our own merely to find out points on
which we can agree with them ; in other words, for it
usually comes to that, the habit of judging of other
religions by the degree of resemblance they bear to
our own beliefs. There are ideas in Buddhism, no
doubt, with which we can heartily sympathize; but
the most instructive points in the history of that, or of
any other religion, are often those with which we can

DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 6

least agree. The fact that truth can be found among
all peoples and in all creeds, has been acknowledged
through so many centuries by men eminent in the
Church and out of it, that it has become almost a
truism, and needs scarcely to be stated, certainly not
to be proved.

For sucb purposes, comparisons are no longer of any
service ; and they will be of worse than no service if
we imagine that likeness is any proof of direct rela-
tionship, that similarity of ideas in different countries
shows that either the one or the other was necessarily
a borrower. We can easily understand how Clement
of Alexandria found in coincidences between Christian
and pagan belief convincing evidence that the whole
of the wisdom of the world (as he knew it) was bor-
rowed from the Scriptures of his own faith. His was
at least both a more liberal and a truer explanation of
the facts than that other theory of the Jesuit father,
who is related to have been so struck with the simi-
larities between the Tibetan and the Eoman ritual,
that he thought the devil had deluded those unfortu-
nate people with a blasphemous imitation of the religion
of Christ.i It would of course be going too far to

1 1 Cor. X. 20, " They sacrifice to devils and not to God," may
have suggested the idea. The Spaniard Acosta, quoted in Lord
Kingsborough's Antiquities of Mexico, Vol. vi. p. 410, advances.
a similar explanation of the Mexican vituaL

b2

4 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

deny that coincidences of belief are occasionally pro-
duced by actual contact of mind with mind ; but it is
no more necessary to assume that they always are so,
than to suppose that chalk cliffs, if there be such, in
China are produced by chalk cliifs in the Downs of
Sussex. They have no connection one with another,
except that both are the result of similar causes. Yet
this method of reasoning is constantly found, not only
through the whole range of the literature of the subject
from classical times downwards, but even in works of
the present day.

There is yet another use of the comparative study of
religious beliefs, often hitherto, and still unfortunately,
resorted to, against which we must be sedulously on
our guard. One of the clearest statements of the doc-
trine I refer to may be found in a speech, most remark-
able in many ways, delivered in our own House of
Commons by u Member whose name has not been
preserved, a ''■ gentleman from Gray's Inn," in the year
1530. The date is significant, for the idea of religious
freedom, o].* even of religious toleration, was then almost
unknown.^

^ TJnlvnown., that is, among Christians. Complete toleration, as
is well known, is one of the most fundamental teachings of Bud-
dhism, and was laid down as a duty in edicts recorded on stone two
centuries and a half before the birth of Christ. This is so striking
that I quote these edicts in full in the Appendix.

DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS YHOUGIIT. 5

"Mr. Speaker," said this barrister, "if none else
" but the Bishop of Eochester or his adherents did hold
" this language, it would less trouble me. But since
" so many religious and different sects, now conspicuous
"in the whole world, do not only vindicate unto them-
" selves the name of the True Church, but labour be-
"twixt invitations and threats for nothing less than
" to make us resign our faith to a simple obedience, I
"shall crave leave to propose what I think fit in this
"case for us laiques and secular persons to do

" For as several teachers, not only differing in lan-
"guage, habit and ceremony, or at least in some of
"these, but peremptory and opposite in their doctrines,
" do present themselves, much circumspection must be
" used." ....

Then, after pointing out the difficulty of choosing
between these " several teachers," the gentleman from
Gray's Inn proposes that

" . . . .he [the laique] shall hold himself to common,
"authentic, and universal truths; and consequently
" inform himself what, in the several articles proposed
" to him, is so taught as it is first written in the heart,
" and together delivered in all the laws and religions
" he can hear of in the whole world ; this certainly can
" never deceive him." ....

If this plan of arriving at truth be followed, " it will
"concern our several teachers to initiate us in this
" (universally accepted) doctrine before they come to

6 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

" any particular doctrine, lest otherwise they do like
" those who would persuade us to renounce daylight
'' to study only by their candle." ....

The gentleman from Gray's Inn then sets out what
he thought to be such universally accepted beliefs, and
concludes : " These therefore, as universal and un-
" doubted truths, should in my opinion be first received.
" They will at least keep us from impiety and atheism.
" . . . . Let us therefore establish and fix these catholic
"and universal notions: .... so that whether the
" Eastern, Western, Northern or Southern teachers —
"and particularly whether my lord Eochester, Luther,
"Eccius, Zwinglius, Erasmus, Melanchthon, &c. — be
" in the right, we laiques may so build upon these
" catholic and infallible grounds of religion, as what-
" soever superstructure of faith be raised, these foun-
" dations yet may support them."

The speaker — evidently a man of rare toleration and
enlightenment — was a Catholic, and his speech is really
nothing else but the Quod semper, quod ubique,
quod ab omnibus, of the Catholic Church applied
in a way which would have put an end at once to
the bitter feelings and useless persecutions which so
lamentably disgraced the eventful struggle then already
commencing to shake thrones and peoples. His view
has also much in common with another well-known
adage, Vox populi vox Dei; and if the "gentle-
"man from Gray's Inn" had been speaking only of

DEVELOPEMEXT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 7

elementary morals, one might go a long way with him.
But in matters of religious belief it is scarcely ever
the majority of men, far less all men, who are usually
right. On the contrary, the minorities have time on
their side ; and it is no argument, for instance, for the
truth of the Buddhist theory that it has always been
professed by a larger number of people than the Chris-
tian. Among the most " universal and catholic beliefs"
have been an unquestioning faith in witchcraft and
astrology ; though an influential minority of mankind
has now jQnally rejected them both. It is quite open
to argument that we may go so far as to say that what-
soever has been universally believed among men, in
matters of religion, is probably false. One of the many
modern writers who follow the method we are discuss-
ing, says plausibly enough that he desires to combine
"the testimony rendered by man's spiritual facul-
"ties in different epochs and races concerning ques-
"tions on which these faculties are of necessity the
"final appeal."^ But the facts surely show that the
testimony has been more often wrong than right. How-
ever valuable the combination, or the comparison, of
this testimony may be for historical purposes, it will
disclose to us no infallible guide concealed behind the
veil of multiform error. " I must thirds," says Dr.
Legge, "that the comparative study of religions will

1 Johnson, Oriental Keligions. India, Vol. i. p. 2.

8 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

''dissipate this imagination, and prove it to be an
"unsubstantial hope."^ Surely that is the correct
view. And in any case, we shall not here conduct
our inquiries with any such object, with any such hope.
The task of the historian of religious belief is a much
humbler one, simply to ascertain, if he can, the process
by which men have come to believe as they do.

These, then, being methods and objects which we
shall endeavour not to follow or to seek, what is the
purpose which a comparison of Buddhism with other
religions may reasonably be expected to serve ?

An illustration will perhaps make this clear. In the
allied science of comparative philology, we find, firstly,
that words in the more modern dialects of any family
are derived, as far as possible historically, from words
or roots in the older dialects; and, secondly, that
general rules respecting the tendencies of the growth
of language, and of vowel and consonantal change, are
laid down as being of very general or even sometimes
of universal application. It is quite true that (owing
to the fact that only one branch of the subject — the
Aryan branch — has been, as yet, at all completely
worked out) most of the general rules or tendencies as

^ Religions of China, p. 287.

DEYELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOrS THOUGHT. 9

yet discovered, either depend upon facts observed in,
or are applicable only to, the Aryan field of language.
Comparative philologists may have been too much
given, perhaps, to regarding all questions of the science
of language from an exclusively Aryan standpoint.
But some progress has already been made in the obser-
vation of tendencies which hold good among words and
families of speech not related to one another. And it
is precisely such general observations which are now,
and will increasingly be, the most valuable results of
philological research.

So also in comparative mythology. "Who has not
been charmed by the clear and imexpected light thrown
from the poetry of the Yedas upon many of the myths
most familiar to us in the literature of Greece and
Rome ? But myths are not confined to the shores of
the Mediterranean. Much of this curious phase of
belief that is found there and elsewhere cannot be
similarly explained by derivation from Yedic or other
hj'mns. Even when it can, the difficulty has only been
removed one stage further back. And the most valuable
results of the study of comparative mythology depend
upon the observation of those general tendencies which
prevail in the groA^ih of early beliefs of this kind
common among men.

In the same way it is such general tendencies as a
riglit use of the comparative study of religious belief

10 PLACE OP BUDDHISM IN THE

will enable us to observe, ■which will be the most valu-
able results of our inquiries.

"We must not hope, however, to find more than
tendencies, to find laws in the scientific sense. The
expression "Science of Eeligion" may be useful as a
short phrase in which to sum up, or include, all our
knowledge concerning religious beliefs. But if it be
intended to suggest that we ha ^ yet found, or can
ever hope to find, such fixed rules in these matters as
are laid down in the exact sciences, the expression
Science of Eeligion must be admitted to be a misnomer.
As the word science is most naturally and immediately
referred to the exact sciences, it is unfortunate, to say
the least, to talk as yet of a Science of Eeligion ; and
the name will scarcely be appropriate till the word
science has changed or enlarged its connotation. On
the other hand, too, no generally accepted opinion is
more fallacious than the frequently repeated dictum
that " human nature is everywhere the same." Most
especially on that side of their nature which we are
here discussing, the religious side, men's nature differs
greatly according to their different history, their dif-
ferent surroundings, their diff'erent education. It is
only under similar conditions that man's nature can be
everywhere similar; and it is chiefly because those

DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 17

conditions are never precisely the same, that it is im-
possible to lay down any hard and fast rules of the
developement (or the decay, as some prefer — it does
not matter which) of religious beliefs.

Such being some of the cautions, as to both aim and
method, which we ought carefully to bear in mind
when comparing the details of Buddhism with those of
other systems, we should also never lose sight of the
true position of Buddhism in the general religious
history of India and of the world at large.

Buddhism is one of the so-called "book religions."
When we hear that it was founded some five hundred
years before the birth of Christ, we are apt to think
that it is very old, — as old, as primitive, as rudimen-
tary, as the arts and sciences of those far-off times.
But, comparatively speaking, it is one of the very
latest products of the human mind.

Our conceptions on this point are prone to be dark-
ened by the shortness of the period that has elapsed
since the dawn of recorded historv. It is true that
throughout the world recorded history can only be said
to begin with any completeness about five hundred
years before the Christian era. Here and there in
isolated places we have documentary evidence of the
history of some few tribes for a period somewhat earlier.

12 PLACE OF I3UDDHISM IN THE

And from the oldest of these sources, and from still
older documents that are not historical, we can conjec-
ture, with more or less accuracy, certain general facts
concerning the history, for some still previous centuries,
of those races among whom those sources were handed
down. But aback of all these there stretches
the long vista of unknown centuries which
must form the background of the picture in which
Buddhism should be presented to our minds, if we
wish that picture to be drawn in true perspective.

Compared with what had been before the rise of Bud-
dhism, the distance between ourselves and it vanishes
away to insignificance ; and the first thing we have to
do is to attempt as best we can to realize to ourselves
the long developement of which it was the logically
ultimate outcome, and, in a sense, the close.

It is to be regretted that exigencies of time and space
prevent this part of our subject being treated with
anything like the extent which its importance demands.
And all the more so, since the difficulty of the problem
and the incertitude of our knowledge prevent the little
that can be said from being said sharply and clearly.
But it would add considerably to our difficulties in the
subsequent part of this course, if no foundation had
been laid for our historical sketch by a description,
however slight, of the growth of those ideas among
which Buddhism was born.

DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS TIIOrOIIT. 13

Many centuries before the time of our earliest records,
the parent race of the seven Aryan races — the Hindus,
Persians, Greeks, Eomans, Kelts, Teutons and Sklaves
— had passed through the earliest phases of its reli-
gious beliefs.

Attempts have been made with considerable success
to argue from the words and beliefs found, in their
earliest records, to have been common afterwards among
one or more of the seven races, to the religious ideas
which must have existed in the parent stock. Made
with due caution, such inferences are fair. At the
time when their earliest records were composed, there
was no likelihood of any direct borrowing between the
several races, and the results are confirmed by our
knowledge of early religious beliefs elsewhere.

It is sufficient for our purpose that the beliefs of the
remote ancestors of the Buddhists may be summed up
as having resulted from that curious attitude of mind
which is now designated by the word Animism. They
had come to believe, most probably through the influ-
ence of dreams, in the existence of souls, or ghosts, or
spirits, inside their own bodies ; and they had not yet
learned to discriminate in this respect between them-
selves and the other animals and objects around them
which seemed to be possessed of power and movement.
The Vedas, though they are our earliest records, show
us only a very advanced stage in the beliefs result-

14 PLACE or BUDDHISM IN THE

ing from this simple and unquestioning faitli, so widely
diffused among all races and ages of mankind. The
more powerful spirits or ghosts supposed to dwell in
various external things, have already become in the
Yedas objects of greater fear than the rest ; they are
endowed with higher attributes, are surrounded by
deeper mystery, and have been promoted to be kings,
as it were, among the gods. These were chiefly the
spirits supposed to animate the sky and the heavenly
bodies ; and the promotion of these spirits had so
dimmed the comparative glory of the rest, that the
Animism had become in the Yedas what we call Poly-
theism.

But the newer stage of belief was no contradiction
of the older ; it was simply a further advance along the
same lines, and resting on the same foundations. The
lesser spirits, or at least most of them, survived as naiads
and dryads, sj)irits of the streams and trees, demons,
goblins, ogres, spirit-messengers, and fairies, good or
bad. And the old belief in mysteriously animated
objects survived, too, in the belief in magic, in sorcery,
and in charms of various kinds.

And here it may be pointed out that it is claiming
too much for the Rig Yeda to maintain that it has pre-
served for us the whole of the ancient Indian thought
on theological matters. Precisely because the lesser
spirits had become, comparatively speaking, of less
account, because each one of them was believed in and

DEVELOPEMEXT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 15

fearerl by fewer mortals, we must expect to find them
less mentioned and less described in the collection of
the hymns to the supposed greater spirits. But the
less important beliefs played on the whole a perhaps
greater part in the actual daily thoughts of most of the
ordinary men of the Aryan tribes ; and we must com-
plete the picture by the invaluable details preserved in
the Atharva Yeda, and also elsewhere surviving in the
later literature.

With regard to the internal spirits, the souls of men,
the old Aryans believed that the soul survived after
the body, which enclosed it, had passed away. They
feared and worshipped the ghosts of departed ancestors,
and did not realize as possible or probable any cessation
of the life they expected beyond the grave. The good
and brave and liberal enjoyed a new life of happiness
in that new and spiritual body to which the ghost of
the deceased changed or developed (or perhaps, for the
point is not quite clear, which was inhabited by the
spirit) after death. Whether they clearly held that
the future life was never-ending, whether the belief
in immortality was actually held by all, is very
doubtful. There is all the difference between think-
ing of a future life without raising the question of its
duration, and firmly believing that it would never end.
But at least some of the more highly gifted, the more

IG PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

ardent among the later Vedic poets, looked after death
for an immortal life of sensual bliss.^ On the other
hand, the bad, the false, the stingy, enter into the
nethermost deep of darkness. Of a life before this one,
or of a return of the soul to this world, either as man
or animal, there seems to have then been no suspicion ;
though there are one or two late passages which sug-
gest the possibility of a departed spirit being recalled
to life and to security here on earth.^

In their most essential elements these ideas of the
future life were not only Yedic, they were the common
inheritance of the seven Aryan races; they were re-
tained among the Persians — the brother-race of the
Hindus — in a form strengthened, no doubt, and altered
on the same lines, but very little modified by opposing
conceptions. And when we find that the oldest He-
brew books show little trace of that belief in an immor-
tal future life which became so common among the Jews
after the captivity in Mesopotamia, and that no other
Semitic tribes seem to have originated the idea, the
question springs spontaneously to one's mind, whether
we have not met, in these ancient Aryan beliefs, with

1 Rig Veda ix. 113, 7—11 ; Atharva Veda iv. 34, 2—4, and other
passages, quoted in Muir's Sanskrit Texts, Vol. v. pp. 306 folL

2 Eig A'eda x. 58, 1, x. 60, 10, loc. cit. p. 313.

DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 17

the foimdation-stone of a far-spreading edifice, of that
all-powerful belief in the immortality of th.e soul which
has played so mighty a part in the influences which
have shaped the Europe of to-day.

But in India, tlu'ough the following centuries, there
was gradually, very gradually, brought about a curious
change in these fundamental articles of religious belief.
When Buddhism arose, the accepted and general belief
was that the souls of men had previously existed
inside the bodies of other men, or gods, or animals, or
had animated material objects ; and that when they
left the bodies they now inhabited, they would enter
upon a new life, of a like temporary nature, under one
or other of these various individual forms — the parti-
cular form being determined by the goodness or evil
of the acts done in the present existence. Life, there-
fore, was held to be a never-ending chain, a never-
ending struggle. For however high the conditions to
which any soul had attained, it was liable, by one act
of wickedness, or even of carelessness, to fall again
into one or other of the miserable states.

There was a hopelessness about this creed in direct
contrast to the childlike fulness of hope, the strong
desire for life, that is so clearly revealed in the Vedas.
Very probably the great mass of the people, occupied

c

18 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

in their daily duties, their worldly hopes and fears, did
not allow themselves to be much influenced by this
new creed of transmigration ; but the more their atten-
tion was drawn to religious matters — and at some crisis
or another of his life this may have happened to most
of them — a vague feeling of helplessness and hopeless-
ness must have obtained the mastery over them.

A way of escape had indeed been found. A modi-
fication of the theory of external spirits had pointed
the way to this new refuge for the internal spirit, for
each man's soul or self. There were too many earnest
and intellectual minds among the then Hindus for
Polytheism, tempered only by a subservient Animism,
to remain supreme. As among the Jews and among
the Greeks, so also among the Hindus, there were not
a few to whom a unity underlying the many personified
forms of external nature became gradually more and
more visible. Among the Jews, the corresponding
belief — the belief in one God — had already, about the
time of the rise of Buddhism, gained a complete hold
of the general population. Among the Greeks, the
belief in 6 Geo's, or rather in a to eetov, as distinct from
the belief in ol Geot, in Deity as distinct from the older
deities, was confined mostly to those educated in, or
under the immediate influence of, the schools of philo-

DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 19

sophy. And so in the valley of the Ganges, it was
only in the schools of the philosophizing ascetics, mostly
but by no means exclusively Brahmans, that a unity,
not indeed a personal God in the modern sense, but a
neuter, cold and passionless First Cause, was conceived
to be the source, the abiding support, of all phenomena.

In speaking of these later beliefs, so nearly related
to our own, it is difficult to make use of terms not
liable to much misconception. It has been maintained
that the Jewish belief in an Evil Spirit, side by side
with the Great Spirit, and in subordinate angels and
archangels, good and bad, is sufficient to render inac-
curate any description of them as Monotheists. It is
probable that few, if any, of the Grecian thinkers
believed in the existence of one external Spirit only,
to the complete exclusion of all minor deities. And
certainly even the most advanced among the pre-Bud-
dhistic Hindus never became what would now be called
pure Theists.

They could better be called Pantheists; but even
this expression can only be used of them in a sense not
applicable to the followers of the Pantheism which has
grown out of Christian theology or Greek philosophy.
The Indian philosophers continued to believe in the
souls or spirits supposed to exist inside the human

c 2

20 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

body, and in all the hierarchy of the external spirits,
the gods of rivers, trees and pools, of earth and sky
and sea, and all their numerous progeny. But they
held all these, and all matter, to be the mere sportive
emanations of a supreme primordial Spirit, who was
unconscious, and who was led by causes beyond his
(or rather its) control to manifest itself in all those
temporary and changing forms which make up this
world and its inhabitants. All things are unreal. All
being, save the One, is evanescent. And as to the
souls of men, though they are condemned to wander
for ever and ever from shape to shape, from labour to
trouble, their existence is not independent; they are
not self-existent, and they can defeat the unlucky
action of the God that gave birth to their individuality
by certain ceremonies, or a certain kind of knowledge,
held, by various opposing schools, to be able to destroy
again that individuality by bringing about the return
of the spark to the central fire, by the absorption of
the human soul in that Great Soul which was supposed
to be the only real existence.

Can any of the many different speculations which
have grown up in Christian soil be said to be the same
as this hopeless creed ? Can these Indian notions be
accurately described or correctly summed up by any of
our Western names ? We may admit that the general
course of speculation has run along parallel lines in the
valley of the Ganges and in the basin of the Mediter-

DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 21

ranean. But modem Pantheism has arisen after the
stage of those polytheistic beliefs of which Indian
Pantheism was the outgrowth and the explanation:
and European Pantheism, whether Greek, mediaeval
or modern, is always, or very nearly always, entirely
uninfluenced — I may venture to say, untarnished — by
the longing to escape from life. If we, then, use the
words Pantheism or Monotheism when describing
Hindu thought, we should never forget that, though
similar in many respects, they are yet quite as different
in other respects from the Pantheisms and Monotheisms
of the West.

In this curious despair of life, we must, I think,
admit the power of an influence the very existence of
which it has become the fashion to deny. Mr. Buckle
may have wished to push the influence of climate too
far, to regard it too much as an explanation sufficient
of itself. But when we find this despair of life con-
spicuously absent not only in the Yedas, but in the
earliest records of the other Aryan races, and in all the
schemes of life that have obtained currency in more
temperate climes, we cannot omit to notice the fact
that it sprang up in India after the Aryan tribes had
descended into the valley of the Ganges, and had been
long under the influence of the oppressive heat to which
they had not been accustomed, and from which there

22 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

was no escape. It is true that World- weariness, Welt-
schmerz, is not unknown in Europe. But the fact
that it has arisen mostly at a certain period of life
shows it to be here also at least in part due to physical
causes. Few individuals in temperate climes are per-
manently pessimists; and such pessimist philosophy
as does exist is more theoretical than practical, and
has never obtained so complete a hold of all the more
thoughtful minds as it had in India at the time of the
rise of Buddhism.

It is possible to argue that this weariness of life was
due to the system of caste, a yoke which seems intole-
rable to modern European minds. But the evils of
the system are often exaggerated, the immutability of
its rules is often overstated-; and in those early times,
when the system was only arriving at complete deve-
lopement, it is probable that the people themselves by
no means felt its yoke so heavy as it is commonly sup-
posed to be.

As is now well kno"s\Ti, there is no mention of caste
in the oldest hymns of the Yedas. But the bitter con-
tempt of the Aryans for foreign tribes, their domineer-
ing and intolerant spirit, their strong antipathies of
race and of religion, are in harmony with the special
features of caste as afterwards established. It is natural
that, as the bitter struggles against the non- Aryan

DEVELOPEMENT OF EELIGIOUS THOUGUT. 23

peoples died away, the domineering spirit of the con-
querors should have lasted on, and have found vent for
itself in the pride of class distinctions. It is accordingly-
only in some of the latest Yedic hymns that we find
the first mention of those four classes — ^the Brahmans,
the Eajanyas, the Vaisyas and the SUdras — to which
all the later castes have been subsequently traced back.
Even then the division was as yet into classes, not into
castes properly so called. And it is in the Brahmana
literature that we come to the earliest passages in
which exclusive privileges are claimed for the Brah-
mans as priests, and for the nobles as entitled to receive
the sacred unction. It seems certain that when the
Brahmanas were first composed the barrier between all
the higher classes had become impassable, or, in other
words, that these classes had been hardened into castes.
It is most probable that this momentous step followed
upon, and was chiefly due to the previous establishment
of, a similar hard and fast line preventing any one
belonging to the non- Aryan tribes from intermarrying
with an Aryan family, or being incorporated into the
Aryan race. It was the hereditary disability the Aryans
had succeeded in imposing upon races they despised,
which, re-acting within their own circle, and strength-
ened by the very intolerance that gave it birth, has
borne such bitter fruit through so many centuries.
But it is perhaps scarcely surprising that the pride of
race should have put an impassable barrier between

24 PLACB OF BUDDHISM IN THE

the warlike Aryans and the darker races whom they
had conquered in so many fights. It is no isolated fact
that pride of birth had led the nobles to separate them-
selves from the mass of the people. It is not in India
alone that the superstitious fears of all have yielded to
the priesthood an unquestioned and profitable supre-
macy. And there are proofs enough of the tendency
of occupations, in the earlier stages of civilization, to
become hereditary.

The state of society in the valley of the Ganges at
the time of the rise of Buddhism, was not so very dif-
ferent from the state of society in other races at similar
stages of their history. The hereditary priesthood, the
exclusive privileges of the Brahmans, were, no doubt,
as ii.con testable as the hereditary priesthood and ex-
clusive privileges of the corresponding classes in Judeea
in the time of Christ. Superstitions regarding purity
and impurity, which play so great a part elsewhere in
the settlement of early religious and social customs,
were held as strongly as among the Jews and Persians.
And a few, but by no means all or the most important,
of men's daily occupations had become confined to
certain families, which were really castes in the modern
sense. The larger divisions into classes had also already
merged into castes ; intermarriages were no longer pos-
sible except between equal ranks. "No Kshatriya could
any longer become a Brahman, far less one of the abo-
riginal tribes enter into the social ranks of the sacred

DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOrGHT. 25

Aryans. But the elaborate distinctions of the modern
castes were then unknown; the stringent penalties,
which in after times followed on the breach of caste
rules, had not yet been heard of; and the commonest
modes of livelihood, agriculture and trade, were fol-
lowed, even more indiscriminately than now, by all
alike.

The worst part of the circle of caste ideas was un-
doubtedly the supremacy accorded to the Brahmans by
birth. But even this might have caused little practical
harm had it not been for the soul-theory, and for the
curious belief in the efficacy of the rites and ceremonies
they could perform, on which that supremacy rested.
These beliefs, perhaps a necessary, certainly an almost
universal stage in the developement of religion, had a
most baleful influence on the every-day life of the
people among whom Buddhism was first proclaimed.
The power of the gods was to them a very real thing.
The influence of the stars, and the good or ill luck of
the days on which the various customary ceremonies
were to be performed, or the various businesses of life
were to be set on foot, were to them of very real
importance. There was indeed very little, if any, of
what we should now call prayer. But the gods could
be compelled by sacrifices rightly offered, by hymns
properly intoned, to favour the fortunate worshipper ;

26 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

and charms rightly recited, horoscopes correctly cast,
talismans whose power had been already tested, could
ensure the results which men had most at heart. The
happiness of the soul, too, in its next birth depended
upon the due performance of settled ceremonies ; and
for all these things the help of the Brahmans was
required, and had to be richly paid. It would be use-
less to attempt to disguise the evils resulting from
such a state of things. But we should never forget
that the evil was due, not to the depravity of the
Brahmans, but to the beliefs of the people ; and that
those beliefs were the natural outcome and result of
the previous stages of belief through which they had
passed during the long ages of their previous history.

Buddhism was by no means the first effort that had
been made to change this condition of things. There
was absolute freedom of thought in ancient India.
The Brahmans themselves were often the leaders in
enunciating new views, which would elsewhere have
been condemned as heterodox ; and men of other castes
were allowed to set up as teachers of systems really
incompatible with the inherited beliefs. Invaluable
records of this philosophical and sophistical tendency
of the Brahmans, to which some reference has already
been made, is preserved in the Upanishads, — in many

DEVELOPEMENT OF EELIGTOUS THOUGHT. 27

respects the most interesting portion of the literature
of pre-Buddhistic India that has come down to ns.
And the lineal descendants of these schools of thought
are the well-known six systems of Hindu philosophy,
one of which, the Yedantist, has acquired so deep an
influence over all the later varieties of Hindu thought.
Of the then opinions of the thinkers of other sects we
have no records. But their descendants no doubt
greatly influenced the later modifications of Buddhism,
and the sect now called Jains has probably preserved
the teachings of others.

One distinguished scholar, Professor Jacobi, has
supposed that the Buddhist theory of the Buddhas
was derived from a corresponding theory of the fore-
runners of the Jains; and it is common ground to
many writers on the history of religion that Gotama
borrowed largely from Kapila, the reputed founder of
one of these early systems, the Sankhya (or numeral)
philosophy. But I would venture to enter a protest
against such arguments. The extant books of the
Jains are many centuries later than the Pali Pitakas.
There is not the slightest evidence that any one of the
w^ritings of the six schools of philosophy are pre-
Buddhistic. Such similarity as really exists between
any of these works and the Pali Pitakas may perhaps
be due to a common origin ; it is quite as likely that
the Buddhist ideas are the originals ; and in any case
it is to works known to exist before the time of Gotama,

23 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

and especially to the earlier TJpanisliads, that we must
look if we wish to discover what Indian philosophy
really was before the advent of Buddhism.

IN'ow unfortunately the Upanishads, by different
authors and of different dates, are as difficult to appre-
ciate and to understand as the earliest philosophers of
the Greeks, and for a similar reason. They present
to us, not a finished system, but the beginnings of
thought, the vague struggles of earnest minds first
grappling with the great problems of life. But one
idea recurs throughout their long, and usually tedious,
verbiage, and that is the belief that there was some-
thing far better, far higher, far more enduring, than
the right performance of sacrifice; that the object of
the wise man should be to know, inwardly and con-
sciously, the Great Soul of all ; and that by this know-
ledge his individual soul would become united to the
Supreme Being, the true and absolute Self. This
was the highest point of the old Indian philosophy ;
it was the ultimate outcome of the long history of the
Aryan spirit-belief; and on those old lines, in that
same direction, it is difficult to see what farther step
was even possible.

The distinguishing characteristic of Buddhism was
that it started on a new line, that it looked at the
deepest questions men have to solve from an entirely

DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIOIOUS THOUGHT. 29

different standpoint. It swept away from the
field of its vision the whole of the great soul-
theory which had hitherto so completely filled and
dominated the minds of the superstitious and of the
thoughtful alike. For the first time in the history of
the world, it proclaimed a salvation which each man
could gain for himself, and by himself, in this world,
during this life, without any the least reference to
God, or to gods, either great or small.

Like the Upanishads, it placed the first importance
on knowledge ; but it was no longer a knowledge of
God, it was a clear perception of the real nature, as
they supposed it to be, of men and things. And it
added to the necessity of knowledge, the necessity of
purity, of courtesy, of uprightness, of peace, and of a
universal love, " far-reaching, grown great, and beyond
measure."

The adherents of the new sect, as the Book of the
Great Decease puts it, were to strive to be " full of
" confidence, modest in heart, ashamed of ^^Tong, full of
" learning, strong in energy, active in mind, and full of
" wisdom ;" they were to " live in the practice, both in
"public and private, of those virtues which, when
"unbroken, intact, unspotted and unblemished, make
"men free, and which are untarnished by the belief in
" the efficacy of any outward acts of ritual or ceremony,
" by the hope of any kind of future life."^
1 See Kh. D., Buddhist Suttas from the Pali, pp. 8, 10.

30 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

"We are not called upon here to attempt any estimate,
or to come to any conclusion, as to whether this new
departure was or was not right, much less whether it
is the only right one. What I venture to submit to
you is merely that it is this new departure, this ignor-
ing of the soul, which is the most important fact in the
comparative study of Buddhism. Everywhere where
the attitude of mind called Animism — the first attempt
at science, as it is the first step in religion, for these
meet together at the birth, just as they will kiss each
other at the close of history — everywhere where Anim-
ism has been permanently modified, it has been so by
its developement into Polytheism; and this, though
far from universal, is true not only of the seven Aryan
races, but of Egypt, of I^orth America and Mexico, of
Arabia and Canaan, of China and Japan. Everywhere
where philosophy — but this of course is comparatively
seldom — has arisen in the midst of polytheists, it has
perceived a unity behind the many, and has tended
towards a more or less pantheistic Monotheism.
Then, lastly — and this in only isolated cases — there has
come a time when theological rivalries have lost their
interest, and metaphysical discussions have lost their
value ; when men have tried, with more or less success,
to seek for the sum mum bonum in various systems
of self- culture in which the gods are practically dis-
regarded, or quite left out of the account.

DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 31

Comtism, Agnosticism and Buddhism are, it is
true, the only systems which have broken away, in
the most uncompromising manner, from the venerable
soul-theories which have grown out of the ancient
Animism. But Stoicism, Yedantism, Confucianism and
Deism, had come very near to the newer standpoint,
and there is a whole side of Theism, and even of
Christianity, which inculcates the same lesson. The
kingdom of heaven that is within a man, the peace
that passeth understanding, is the nearest analogue to
the Buddhist I^irvana which I know of in "Western
thought ; and it is not the newer systems alone which
insist upon the necessity of self-culture and of self-
control.

It may be added that each of these various systems
can also be said, in one sense, to have practically failed.
Stoicism, Christianity, Comtism, Confucianism, Bud-
dhism and all the rest, have so far disa]3pointed the
hopes of their founders, and of their early disciples.
Though alike in many essential points, they differ one
from another, not only in details, but in other things
which their followers hold to be of the first importance.
And the reason why they differ is the one thing in
which they are most essentially alike. Each — though
this will be admitted of Christianity only by those who
think that the history of Christianity should be treated
by the same methods as the history of other religions — •
each is the natural outcome of an immeasurable past,

S2 PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN THE

in wliich ideas, closely related no doubt, but always
different, have undergone very slow and very gradual
changes in directions similar, though in no case quite
the same. Each has carried into its solution of the
momentous problem it has had to face — and which
each has faced with so great a degree of manfulness
and earnestness — the inevitable influence of the long
past it has inherited. Each, however widely it appealed
to the people, however clear its repudiation of ranks
and castes, however widely its doors stood open, has
really been above the heads, beyond the grasp, of the
general public of the nation among which it first
appeared. And each, in putting new wine into the
old bottles, in preserving many of the old phrases, has
left a soil in which the old beliefs could again take
root, and, nourished by the old ignorance and supersti-
tion, could grow up as a rank vegetation to counteract,
if not to choke, all that Vas most beneficial and most
true in the newer teaching.

We are deeply moved as we watch the representation
by some powerful actor of the tragedy of the fall of some
man or woman led on to destruction by the very con-
ditions of their nature. How much greater the disaster
when a whole nation, to whom the doors of liberty
have once been opened, closes them upon itself, and
relapses into the bondage of delusions ! It would be
hard to find, in the whole history of the world, a greater
tragedy than that which was typified by the feast of

DEVELOPEMENT OF RELIGIOUS TIIOrOHT. 33

Jagaii-nath. The number of deaths at that festival has
doubtless been sometimes exaggerated, and I am quite
aware that reasons can be given for the hideous cha-
racter of the carvings on the triumphal car of Vishnu.
But it is acknowledged that the temple at Purl had
once been Buddhist, and that the very name Jagan-
nath — now supposed to be an actual spirit, a form of
Yishnu — is really nothing but a misapplied ancient
epithet, the Pali Loka-natha, of the great thinker and
reformer of India. We know that deaths did, and up
to very modern times, in fact take place, and were sup-
posed to secure a happy entrance of the "soul" into
realms of delight in heaven. When we call to mind
how the frenzied multitudes, drunk with the luscious
poison of delusions from which the reformation they
had rejected might have saved them, dragged on that
sacred car, heavy and hideous with carvings of obscenity
and cruelty, — dragged it on in the name of Jagan-nath,
the forgotten teacher of enlightenment, of purity, and
of universal love, while it creaked and crushed over
the mangled bodies of miserable suicides, the victims
of once exploded superstitions, — it will help us to
realize how heavy is the hand of the immeasurable past ;
how much more powerful than the voice of the prophets
is the influence of confj^euial fancies, and of inherited
beliefs.

LECTURE II.
THE PALI PITAKAS

The belief of the orthodox Buddhists assigns the
whole of the existing canonical books to the period
immediately following the death of Gotama, and claims
for them the sanction and authority, if not the author-
ship, of the immediate disciples of the Buddha himself.

It would be strange indeed if such a belief had not
arisen. Many of the books purport to record the very
words of the Master, or events in his life witnessed by
his personal followers. There is no absolute statement
in the books as to their date or authorship. Historical
criticism was quite unknown in the early centuries of
Buddhism, when men were concerned with matters
they held to be vastly more important than exact state-
ments of literary history. The tendency of the more
devout minds among the early followers of Gotama
would inevitably lead them to attach great importance
to the books that had been handed down, and to assign
to them therefore the highest possible antiquity. And

THE PALI PITAKAS. 35

when the idea that those very books had been in exist-
ence shortly after the death of the Buddha had once
gained ground, any one who denied or even doubted
the fact would be regarded with dislike, and avoided
as a dangerous person.

But when impartial students, who are not orthodox
Buddhists, come to read the Buddhist Scriptures in the
light of the historical criticism which has grown up in
modern times in Europe, and with historical rather than
with religious objects in view, they perceive at once,
from the internal evidence afforded by the books them-
selves, that the orthodox opinion can no longer be
maintained. It is quite clear that the literature has
been of gradual growth, and that, though the books as
we now have them contain a great deal of older mate-
rial, some of it perhaps reaching back to a time even
before the death of Gotama, they cannot have been put
into their present shape till long after that event.

When we attempt, however, to advance from this
general proposition into more detailed statements, when
we endeavour to form to ourselves any conception of
the actual process by which the literature as a whole
assumed its present form, we are beset by numerous
difficulties. Those who have followed the course of
speculation as to the origin and developement of the
New Testament canon, or even only any one phase of
it — such as the controversy raised by Strauss's work
on the Life of Christ, the debate as to the authorship

d2

36 THE PALI PITAKAS.

of the Gospel according to John, or the discussion
between the author of "Supernatural Eeligion" and
the Bishop of Durham — will easily understand how
this is. The kind of questions that arise, the kind of
arguments to which appeal has to be made, are much
the same in the case of both literatures. And in both
cases the final decision is apt to depend on personal
impressions, whose validity is very much open to
dispute.

It is true that Europeans come to the consideration
of such questions, when they relate to the history of
the Buddhist canon, with a degree of impartiality it
would be unreasonable to expect, either from Christians
or from Buddhists, when dealing with the literature of
their own religion. There has therefore been much
greater unanimity in such conclusions as have been
already put forward by Pali scholars. But, on the
other hand, we know as yet much less about the Bud-
dhist canon than we know about the Christian. The
Buddhist Pitakas, as their sacred books are collectively
called, have not as yet been edited in anything like
completeness. And we know much less, from other
sources, of the history of the time in which they arose,
than we know of the corresponding period in Christian
history. The result is, at present, a degree of uncer-
tainty even greater, if possible, in the one case than in
the other. It will be noticed, however, that the rea-
sons for this uncertainty are very different in the two

THE PALI PITAKAS. 87

cases. The materials on wliich the final decision as to
the history of the New Testament will ultimately rest
must be substantially the same as those which are now
accessible. The present variety of opinion would seem,
therefore, to be very greatly due to mental differences
in the investigators themselves. In the case of the
Pali Pitakas, the materials on which our judgment
must rest are still for the most part hidden away in
MSS. ; and though these are now being published with
encouraging rapidity, it would be unwise to occupy
your time with conjectural discussions of questions
which new evidence may any day decide for us one
way or the other. I propose to confine myself, there-
fore, to a simple statement of those facts which are
already known, and to an illustration, by one or two
examples taken from the books themselveSj of the
character of the Pali Suttas.

As is well known to you, the Buddha was not content
merely to proclaim his new system to the world ; he
founded an Order, the members of which were to carry
out the system and hand it down to future generations.
There immediately arose a number of questions regard-
ing the regulation of that Order, which are represented
to have been settled in his lifetime by the Master him-
self—questions as to the admission to the Order ; its

38 THE PALI PITAKAS.

internal government ; its property ; the relations of the
members of the Order, male and female, to one another
and to the outside world ; the result of a breach by any
member of the Eules of the Order, and so on.

The Order was a kind of republic. All proceedings
were settled by resolutions agreed upon in regular
meetings of its members, which were held subject to
the observance of certain established regulations and
to the use of certain fixed forms of words. The forms
of words under which the meetings were conducted,
and the resolutions passed, were called Kammavacas,
that is, the "Words of the Act." They were naturally
regarded with great reverence by the members of the
Order, and they were handed down with scrupulous
care. Though a large number of them have long ago
fallen into abeyance, most, if not all, of them have
survived down to the present day, and are extant in
MSS. now existing in Buddhist countries, and some-
times to be found in our public libraries. There is
good reason for the hope that our collections of these
formularies — no doubt the most ancient forms recorded
in the world's literature for preserving order and deco-
rum in the conduct of general assemblies — will even-
tually be nearly, if not quite, complete. Only the
other day, when a box of miscellaneous palm-leaf MSS.
from different parts of India, now belonging to the
Liverpool Free Library, was sent to me for report, I
found among them a copy of several of these Kamma-

THE PALI PITAKAS. 89

vacas hitherto unknown to be still extant ; and there
are other MSS. of similar contents in the British
Museum, and in the National Library at Paris, which
have not yet been thoroughly examined.

The general outline of all these formularies is the
same in all cases, and one example will suffice as a
sample of all.

After a layman entered the Order, he often wished
to choose a new name, or epithet, bearing some refer-
ence to his new aim of life — a custom which may well
have arisen or received encouragement from the fact
that the ordinary names in use "in the world" con-
tained the name of a god, or otherwise implied an
acknowledgment of the soul-theory which every mem-
ber of the Order was supposed to have abandoned. If
a member desired thus to change his name, he would
thrice state, formally, at a meeting of the Order, his
desire to do so. Some learned and respected member
would then on his behalf address the meeting thus :

" Let the venerable assembly hear me ! Our Brother
"A. B. requests permission to assume the name of
"CD. If the time is now meet for the assembly to
" do so, the assembly will authorize our Brother A. B.
•' to assume the name C. D. Such is the proper course
•' in such a case.

"If any venerable member assent to permission
"being granted to our Brother A. B. to assume the
" name C. D., let him keep silence. If any venerable
" member doth not assent, let him now speak."

40 THE PALI PITAKAS.

Should no one speak on the opposite side, he would
then continue :

" The assembly authorizes A. B. to assume the name
*' C. D. Therefore is the assembly silent. Thus do I
"understand."

"With these words, what we should call the motion
(the natti) is considered to have been carried. The
only amendment considered possible is apparently a
direct negative ; and there is no counting of votes, for
no resolution is passed unless the meeting is unani-
mously in favour of it.

It will be noticed that no such officer as president or
chairman is referred to. Whether there usually was
one in ancient times we do not know ; but in the few
cases in which the use of these simple ceremonies — the
only kind of ritual in use among orthodox Buddhists —
still survives, it is the custom for the senior member
present to preside over the meeting.

All the Kammavacas relate to the application of
Bules already established to particular places, times or
persons. They do not contemplate the discussion of
any changes in the Eules themselves, nor of any points
in doctrine, in discipline, or in the system of self-
culture. We hear of such points being discussed in
a conversational way in informal meetings, and even
sometimes in actual assemblies of the Order, but the
Xammavacas do not refer to them.

THE PALI PITAKAS. 41

The Eiiles themselves, which were to be carried out,
wherever possible, by such Kammavacas, are very
few and simple. The object of joining the Order was
supposed to be the attainment, in part or in whole, of
the state of mental and moral culture called Arahat-
ship. This was, of course, entirely a personal affair,
and the matters to be settled by rule were only such
as would naturally arise in a body of men following no
worldly occupation, practically communists in respect
of such property as the Order could possess, and hold-
ing no religious services and engaging in no prayers
(in the Christian sense) of any kind at all.

Among the most important of the Eules are those
concerning the holding of Uposatha, a regular meet-
ing of the Order, the time of which was fixed, like
the Sabbath, by the changes of the moon. At those
meetings there was recited a work called the Pati-
mokkha, literally the "Disburdemnent," a list of
offences against ordinary morality, and against deco-
rum in outward behaviour, by confession of which,
guilty members of the Order could " disburden" them-
selves— that is, I think, in a double sense, both subjec-
tively and in reference to their standing in the Order.

The other Rules deal exclusively with admission to
the Order; the duties of seniors towards juniors, and
vice versa ; the yearly change of residence during the
rainy season, and the holding of a ceremony called
Pavarana at its close; the use of various things

42 THE PALI PITAKAS.

deemed to be luxuries ; the question of dress ; the
validity of formal resolutions of Order ; the mainte-
nance of discipline; the rules of hospitality; the conduct
of the brethren and sisters to each other ; and a few
sanitary regulations and other miscellaneous points of
minor importance.

I^ow one great division of the Buddhist Scriptures
— the Yinaya Pitaka — is nothing else than what we
should now call a text-book or manual of these various
regulations and of the resolutions relating to them. And
it is divided into three Parts: 1, the Khandakas, or
"Chapters," containing theEules; 2, the Sutta-vib-
haijga, or "Exposition of the Patimokkha," contain-
ing a commentary on the so-called list of offences above
mentioned; and 3, the Parivara-patha, or "Appendix,"
a sort of index and r^sum^ of the other two.

The last of these three, the "Appendix," is, as you
would naturally suppose, much later than the others,
and, compared with them, of little independent value.
The other two form an edition, evidently drawn up
some considerable time after the formation of the Order,
of the then existing regulations. In this edition,
each separate regulation or offence is preceded by
an introduction giving an account of the occasion on
which the Buddha himself is said to have laid down
or declared it ; and is followed by what we should now
call notes, setting forth exceptions, consequences, appli-
cations, and so on. Among these notes, I will mention

THE PALI PITAKAS. 4

o

in passing that we find the whole of an ancient com-
mentary on the Patimokkha, which must, of course,
have been abeady in existence when the present
^'edition" was compiled.

1^0 one is mentioned as the author of this edition
of the Eules of the Buddhist Order; and indeed it
probably had no author in our modern sense of that
word. It is merely the last form reached by a lite-
rature which grew up in a gradual way. As to date,
the great bulk of it must be older than the
year 350 B.C. It received, however, its last touches
about a century later; and it contains also some por-
tions— such as the actual statement of the primary
Eules, and of the various offences, and of the forms of
the Kammavacas — which may even reach back to the
lifetime of the Buddha himself. In other words, these
books were in existence, practically as we now have
them, within about 150 years after the time of Gotama;
and they grew up out of older material, parts of which
they have preserved intact. It will be seen below
that a similar statement applies also to the rest of
the books in the Pali Pitakas. And amid the chaos
which still reigns in the chronology of Indian lite-
rature it is a great gain to be able to fix the date
of so important a literature within a so narrow limit
of time.

This conclusion as to the age of the Yinaya Pitaka
depends on a number of considerations which it would

44 THE PALI PITAKAS.

take a very considerable time — certainly the time
allotted to the rest of this course of Lectures — to set
out clearly and fully. The whole argument is much
too intricate even to be summarized to advantage.
And there are other matters, of greater interest from
the point of view from which these Lectures are deli-
vered, which demand our notice. I will only say,
therefore, that the conclusions, as far as I have stated
them, are accepted by all Pali scholars ; and that the
details may be found in the Introduction to Dr. Olden-
berg's edition of the whole text of the Yinaya Pitaka
(where the greater portion of the argument was first
put forth), and in the Introduction to a complete trans-
lation of the Patimokkha and of the Khandakas, which
Dr. Oldenberg and myself are conjointly preparing for
the series of translations from the Sacred Books of the
East now being published at Oxford. These trans-
lations will consist of four volumes, of which the first,
containing the Patimokkha, is already published ; the
second is passing through the press ; and the other two
will appear at intervals of six months, so that the whole
will be accessible to English readers before the close of
next year.

The books which treat of the Buddhist Dhamma,
that is to say, of its ethics and philosophy, and of its
system of seK- culture, will probably be considered by

THE PALI PITAKAS. 45

most to be of greater interest than those containing the
regulations of the Order. They are divided, in a pas-
sage in one of the Khandakas just referred to, into five
Nik ay as, or Collections, the whole of which have come
down to us, though they exist as yet for the most part
only in manuscript. It is the first four of these five
Nikayas (the Digha, Majjhima, Saijyutta, and
Agguttara Nikayas) that contain the writings well
known to you under the name of Suttas.

Of these Suttas, those in the first two Nikayas
contain the whole of the Dhamma considered in a
series of long and short conversations, the principal
interlocutor being usually Gotama himself, but occa-
sionally Sariputta, or some other of his principal dis-
ciples. And you will be able to judge of the style and
tone of these conversations from the two examples of
them which will be presently laid before you.

The Suttas in the third Nikaya give the same doc-
trines and in very much the same words, but in a
difi'erent arrangement.

You will easily understand that it is often very diffi-
cult to gather from a series of dialogues the whole of
the Buddha's teaching on any one point. As in the case
of the Socratic Dialogues, to which these are in many
respects very similar, opinions on the same or nearly
allied points are found in many different Suttas; and
the names of the dialogues, often merely proper names,
are very little guide to their actual contents. To

46 THE PALI PITAKAS.

gather together, therefore, a complete statement of
early Buddhist teaching on any question, it would be
necessary to consult the whole of the dialogues in the
first two Nikayas, and to compare and combine the
various utterances.

It is from this point of view that the Sagyutta
[N^ikaya — literally, ''The Collection of Linked, or
Arranged, Treatises" — ^has been made. In it all the
paragraphs relating to any one subject are brought
together, independently of the conversational form in
which they are supposed to have been first delivered,
and in which they appear in the two former Collections.

The question, then, naturally suggests itself. Which is
the older form ? Are the conversations built up out
of the arranged treatises, or are these latter extracted
from the conversations ? To this question, no definite
answer can as yet be given. We do not as yet know
even whether the substance of the whole of the para-
graphs in the third Nikaya will eventually be found
in the first two ; and it would be useless to debate pro-
babilities on the scanty evidence at our command.

The fourth Nikaya, the Agguttara, contains once
more very much the same matter, but again in a dif-
ferent order.

We have already had occasion incidentally to notice

THE PALI riTAKAS. 47

how important is the place which numbers occupy
in the statements of Buddhist truth. The ''Noble
Path" is eight-fold, and is divided into four stages,
during which ten Saijyojanas, or fetters, have to be
broken. The wisdom to be attained by one walking in
the path is of seven kinds; his spiritual powers, or
senses, are five in number ; and the struggle he has to
carry on against his besetting weaknesses is divided
into four aspects. In the same way, other parts of the
Buddhist system are divided into classes of two, three,
or more connected ideas.

But it must not be supposed that number played
such a part in the early Buddhist philosophy as it
played about the same time in the Pythagorean. These
numbers are merely aids to memory, and have no
mystical meaning. They should be compared rather
with similar enumerations in early and mediseval Chris-
tianity, some of which are still familiar to us, such as
the four gospels, the seven deadly sins, the eight
cardinal virtues, the ten commandments, the twelve
apostles, and so on.

It is with reference to this numerical statement of
Buddhist ideas that the Agguttara Nikaya is arranged.
All the classes containing only one thing are treated
of in the first book, all the dyads in the second, all the
triads in the third, and so on. And it may be said of
this Nikaya, as of the last, that its contents, which often
consist of the very words found in the conversational

48 THE PALI PITAKAS.

Mkayas, may either have been derived from them, or
have existed before them.

Xone of these Four Great Collections, it will be
seen, treats of only one subject. Each of them contains
practically the whole of the Buddhist teaching. It is
unlikely that any one point is exclusively treated by
any one of them. And they are all divided into Suttas,
each conversation of the firtst two being called a Sutta
(or a Suttanta, as the older phraseology had it), and
each different statement in the two latter being also
called a Sutta, though these last Suttas are of course
much shorter than the others.

The last of the Nikayas, on the other hand, consists
of fifteen miscellaneous books of poetry, legends, &c.,
very much more like our modern books, and, for that
very reason, probably later than the Great Collections
of the Suttas. There was from very early times a
difference of opinion among orthodox Buddhists as to
the exact number of books which ought to be included
in this division — a difference of opinion which would
scarcely have been possible had all the books contained
in it been as old as the Yinaya and the Suttas. Pro-
bably the number of writings in this miscellaneous
collection was varied from time to time, chiefly by
additions made to it.

THE PALI riTAKAS. 49

At a period not yet determined, but probably some
centuries after the death of Gotama, there came into
use another division of the whole literature into three
Pitakas, literally "Baskets," meaning, I think, Bodies
of Tradition.^ The first of these three was the Vinaya
Pitaka, as above described ; the second was the Sutta
Pitaka, consisting of the four great collections of the
Suttas ; and the third, containing the books of the fifth
Nikaya and seven other prose works, was called col-
lectively the Abhidhamma Pitaka.

There has been much misconception as to this third
name. It has been explained as meaning metaphysics ;
but so far as anything is as yet known of the Abhi-
dhamma books, they are by no means more meta-
physical than the other parts of the Pitakas. There is
indeed but very little metaphysics in early Buddhism,
and "Abhidhamma" would seem to bear much more
the relation to "Dhamma" which "by-law" bears to
" law," than that which " metaphysics" bears to " phy-
"sics." The so-called Digha-bhanaka, that is, those

^ ^Ir. Trenckner suggests, in his Pali Miscellany, p. 68, that
baskets may have been used, when wheelbarrows were unknown, in
excavating ground, and may have been passed from hand to liand,
as fire-buckets now are. And he quotes two interesting passages from
the Majjhima Nikaya, in which the Brahmans are ridiculed as hand-
ing down their doctrines "basket-wise" (pitaka-sampadaya).
But the earliest use of the word by Buddhists when speaking of
their own books is very much later than the canonical books them-
selves. See, further, A])pendix VIII.

50 THE PALI PITAKAS.

members of the Order whose duty it was to repeat
and hand down the Digha Nikaya, included in the
Abhidhamma Pitaka even the books of lighter litera-
ture, poetry, legends, and the like, which form the
fifth Nikaya. Could they have done so if the word
Abhidhamma had conveyed to the early Buddhists
exclusively the idea of what we now call metaphysics ?
This use of the term Abhidhamma Pitaka has the
advantage of confining the term Sutta Pitaka to those
four Collections which do actually consist of Suttas.
But another ancient school, that of the repeaters of the
Majjhima Nikaya, include the fifth Nikaya with the
four others in the Sutta Pitaka, and confine the term
Abhidhamma Pitaka to the seven prose works, supple-
mentary to the Suttas, above referred to. These,
like the fifteen books of the fifth Nikaya, are pro-
bably each the work of a single author, and are to be
distinguished from the fifteen chiefly by the fact that
they deal rather with questions of doctrine than with
poetry or legend. All these twenty-two works, form-
ing the Abhidhamma Pitaka, were probably in exist-
ence before the end of the third century before the
Christian era. The four great collections of the Suttas
were no doubt much older, and the more important of
them were as old, if not older, than the date assigned
above to the Vinaya Pitaka. I must refer you for a
detailed discussion of this question to the Introduction
to my translation of the longest of these older Suttas,

THE PALI PITAKAS. 61

the Maha-parinibbana Sutta, in Yol. XI. of tbe Sacred
Books of the East, and invite your attention now to
the actual contents of these ancient writings.

The method of composition employed in the older
Suttas will best be understood by the examples above
referred to. Let us take, as a first instance, the

ASSALAYANA SuTTA

OF THE

Majjhima Nikaya.^

It opens by describing how a number of Brahmans
at Savatthi were trying to find some one who could
controvert the opinion put forward by Gotama, that all
the four castes were equally pure. In their difficulty
they apply to a young and distinguished scholar, named
Assalayana, whom they think equal to the contest.
He objects that Gotama is a dhamma-vadi, one who
reasons according to the truth (not, that is, on the
basis of the authority of the Vedas, or of tradition),
and that those who reason thus are difficult to over-
come. However, after repeated solicitation, he reluc-
tantly consents to their request, goes to the place

^ It has been edited by Professor Pischel of Kiel (Chemnitz,
1880), with an English version. It is not the third Sutta of the
Nikaya, as he states in his preface, but the third Sutta in the
Brahmana Vagga, that is, the ninety-third in the Nikaya.

e2

52 THE PALI PITAKAS.

where Gotama was staying, and after exchanging with
him greetings of civility and courtesy, takes a seat by
his side. Then he asks :

"The Brahmans, 0 Gotama, say thus: 'The Brah-
" ' mans are the best caste (literally, the best colour):
"'every other caste is inferior. The Brahmans are
"'the white caste: every other caste is black. The
" ' Brahmans alone are pure : those who are not Brah-
" 'mans are not pure. The Brahmans are the (only)
'• 'real sons of Brahma, born from his mouth, sprung
" ' from Brahma, created by Brahma, heirs of Brahma.'
" But what do you, Sir, say about this ?"

Then the Buddha asks him whether the wives of the
Brahmans are not subject to all the ills and disabilities
of child-birth to which other women are subject.

Assalayana is obliged to confess that this is so, and
that the Brahmans put forward their claims in spite of
this.

The Buddha then, applying our modern comparative
method of inquiry, asks whether in adjacent countries,
such as Bactria and Afghanistan, there are not differ-
ences of colour similar to those between the Brahmans
and other castes, and yet in those countries whether
slaves cannot become masters, and masters become
slaves.

Again Assalayana confesses the fact, and that the
Brahmans put forward their claims in spite of it.

Then Gotama goes on to ask: "How think you, Assa-

THE PALI PITAKAS. 63

'^ layana — a man who is a murderer, a thief, a libertine,
"a liar, a slanderer, violent or frivolous in speech,
"covetous, malevolent, given to false doctrine — will
" such an one, if he he a Khattiya, or a Yessa, or a
" Sudda, he horn after death, when the body is dis-
" solved, into some unhappy state of misery and woe,
" but not if he be a Brahman ?"

Assalayana replies that the Brahman is in this
respect exactly on a par with the others.

Gotama then proceeds to put the contrary case, when
Assalayana declares that those who do the contrary
of all these evil things are equally re-born into some
happy state in heaven, whether they are Brahmans or
whether they are not.

Gotama asks what force or what comfort there can
then be in the claim to especial purity which the Brah-
mans make. But he carries the argument still further.
"What think you, Assalayana, is it the Brahman
" alone who is able, in this land of ours, to cultivate
"friendliness, kindliness, charitable feelings; or can
"the Khattiya, the Vessa and the Stidda do so too?"

And when Assalayana acknowledges that they are
all equal in this respect, Gotama compels him to grant
also that they are equally pure in their bodies, and that
the flame kindled by an outcast by means of two pieces
of wood belonging to a dog's drinking vessel or a pig-
sty, will light a sacred fire as shining and beaming
and bright, and as good for sacrificial purposes, as a

54 THE PALI PITAKAS.

flame kindled by a Brahman or a Khattiya by means
of sweet-smelling sandal- wood !

Then, still questioning, Gotama points out how —
whereas when a mare is united with an ass, the
offspring is a mule, different from both father and
mother — the union of a Khattiya and a Brahman, or
vice versa, results in offspring which resembles both
the parents, with the obvious suggestion that there is
not really any difference of species or caste between
Khattiya or Brahman and half-caste or low-caste men,
as there is in the case of a donkey and a horse.

Finally, Gotama asks the young Brahman scholar,
'to which of two brothers, one an initiated student
' and the other not, the Brahmans themselves would,
' on sacred and solemn occasions, give the precedence?"
"To the initiated student," says Assalayana ; "for
'what thing given to an uninitiated person, not a
'student, will bear with it great advantage?"

" But if the initiated student be of bad character
' and evil habits, and the other be of good character
' and virtuous habits," rejoins Gotama, " to whom then
' will the Brahmans themselves give the precedence ?"
" To the uninitiated," is the reply; " for what thing
' given to a man of bad character and of evil habits
'will bring with it great advantage?"

" But in the former answer you yourself, Assa-
' lay ana," says the Master, "have given up the pre-
' eminence of birth, and in the latter the pre-eminence

THE PALI PITAKAS. 55

^' of acquaintance with the sacred words. And in doing
"so you yourself have acknowledged that purity of
"all the castes which I proclaim!"

""When he had thus spoken, the young Brahman
" Assalayana," says the Sutta, "sat there silent, awk-
" ward, distressed, looking downwards, reflecting, not
"able to answer!"

Then Gotama tells a story, winding up with a kind
word to the young scholar. And the Sutta concludes
with the confession of Assalayana : " Most excellent,
" Gotama, are the words of thy mouth — most excellent!
"May the venerable Gotama receive me as a disciple
" and as a true believer, from this day forth as long as
"life endures !"

It will be seen that this Sutta is merely of a negative
character, the interlocutor being defeated, as it were,
out of his own mouth by a kind of argumentum ad
hominem, in which nothing is assumed but that
which the opponent himself will grant.

Let us therefore take another Sutta, in which the
positive side of Gotama's teaching comes into view,
though only the lower morality of the unconverted
man, the Adi-brahma-cariyaij, not the higher
system of the Noble Path, the Magga-brahma-
cariyag. As in the Sutta we have just summarized,
nothing is assumed in the argumentative part of this

56 THE PALI PITAKAS.

one whicli the opposite side do not themselves acknow-
ledge. As in the last example, time will not allow me
to give more than an abstract, but a complete version
can be found in the volume of translations already
referred to.^ I have there rendered the title, "On
"Knowledge of the Yedas;" the Pali name is,

The Tevijja Sutta

OF THE
DlGHA IS'lKAYA.

A number of wealthy and distinguished Brahmans
are represented as staying at a pleasant spot called
Manasakata, on the banks of the Eapti. There they
had built themselves huts in a fenced enclosure, where
they were in the habit of meeting together to repeat
their mantras, the wonder-working sacred words of
the Vedas.

Two young Brahmans, Yasettha and Bharadvaja,
after learning by heart and repeating all day, go down
in the evening to the river-side to bathe, and then
walk up and down on the sandy beach.

" Ilow a conversation sprang up between Vasettha
"and Bharadvaja, when they were thus taking exer-
"cise after their bath, and walking up and down in
"thoughtful mood, as to which was the true path, and
"which the false."

1 Buddhist Suttas from the Pali, pp. 156—203.

THE PALI riTAKAS. 67

Each of them adduces the authority of a Brahman
teacher, learned in the Scriptures; and when neither
is able to convince the other, Yasettha says, " That
' Samana Gotama, Bharadvaja, of the Sakya clan, who
' left the Sakya tribe to adopt the religious life, is now
'staying at Manasakata, in the mango-grove on the
' bank of the river to the south of Manasakata. IS'ow
' regarding that venerable Gotama, such is the high
' reputation that has been noised abroad, that he is said
' to be 'a fully enlightened one, blessed and worthy,
' ' abounding in wisdom and goodness, happy, with
' ' knowledge of the worlds, a blessed Buddha.' Come
' then, Bharadvaja, let us go to the place where the
' Samana Gotama is ; and having done so, let us ask
'the Samana Gotama touching this matter. What
' the Samana Gotama shall declare unto us, that let us
'bear in mind!"

So they go to the Master and lay their difficulty
before him, Yasettha being the spokesman. When
Gotama hears that they both depend upon authority,
he wants to know what is the dispute, the difference
of opinion between them.

" Just, Gotama, as near a village or a town there are
" many and various paths, yet they all meet together
"in the village; just in that way are all the various
"paths taught by various Brahmans — the Addhariya
"Brahmans, the Tittiriya Brahmans, the Chandoka
"Brahmans, the Chandava Brahmans, the Brahma-

58 THE PALI PITAKAS.

*' cariya Brahmans — are all these saving paths ? Are
" they all paths which will lead him who acts according
'' to them into a state of union with Brahma ?

"Do you say that they all lead aright, Yasettha?"

" I say so, Gotama."

" Do you really say that they all lead aright, Yaset-
'Hha?"

"So I say, Gotama."

"But then, Yasettha, is there a single one of the
"Brahmans versed in the three Yedas, or of their
" pupils, or of their teachers, or of their forerunners up
" to the seventh generation, who has ever seen Brahma
" face to face ?"

To each of these questions, Yasettha answers "No."

"Well, then, Yasettha, those ancient Eishis of the
" Brahmans, versed in the three Yedas, the authors of
"the verses, the utterers of the verses, whose ancient
"form of words so chanted, uttered or composed, the
" Brahmans of to-day chant over again or repeat, in-
" toning or reciting exactly as has been intoned or
" recited — did even they speak thus, saying, ' We
" 'know it, we have seen it, where Brahma is, whence
" 'Brahma is, whither Brahma is?'"

"IN'ot so, Gotama."

" Then you say, Yasettha, that not one of the Brah-
"mans, even up to the seventh generation, has ever
" seen Brahma face to face. And that even the Eishis
" of old, the authors and utterers of those ancient words

THE PALI PITAKAS. 50

which the Brahmans of to-day so carefully intone and
recite, precisely as they have been handed down —
even they did not pretend to know, or to have seen,
where or whence or whither Brahma is. So that the
Brahmans, versed in the three Yedas, have forsooth
said this : ' What we know not, neither have seen,
' to a state of union with that can we show the way !'
Just, Yasettha, as, when a string of blind men are
clinging one to the other, neither can the foremost
see, nor can the middle one see, nor can the hinder-
most see — just even so, methinks, Vasettha, is the
talk of the Brahmans, versed though they be in the
three Yedas, but blind talk. The first sees not,
neither does his teacher see, nor does his pnpil. The
talk, then, of these Brahmans, versed in their three
Yedas, turns out to be ridiculous, mere words, a vain
and empty thing !"
This result is here concisely stated, though in the
words of the original it has not been reached without
further questions. In a similar way, Yasettha acknow-
ledges that the Brahmans cannot show the way to a
state of union with the sun and the moon gods whom
they can see : on which follows an obvious rejoinder
very much as above, concluding with:

"Just, Yasettha, as if a man should say, 'How I
" ' long for, how 1 love, the most beautiful woman in
"Hhisland!'

*' And people should ask him, ' Well, good friend !

60 THE PALI PITAKAS.

" 'this most beautiful woman in the land, whom you
" 'thus love and long for, do you know whether that
"'beautiful woman is a noble lady, or a Brahman
" 'woman, or of the trader class, or a Sudda?'
" And when so asked, he should answer, ' 'No V
"And when people should ask him, 'Well, good
" 'friend ! this most beautiful woman in all the land,
" 'whom you so love and long for, do you know what
"'her name is, or her family name; whether she be
" ' tall or short, dark or of medium complexion, black
" ' or fair ; or in what village or town or city she
"'dwells?'

" But when so asked, he should answer, ' 'No V
" And then people should say to him, ' So then, good
" ' friend ! whom you know not, neither have seen, her
" ' do you love and long for ?'

"And then, when so asked, he should answer, 'No I'
"Now what think you, Yasettha? "Would it not
"turn out, that being so, that the talk of that man
" was foolish talk ? "

" In sooth, Gotama, it would," replies Yasettha,
though he knows now what will be the rejoinder to
follow. After another simile, or parable, very forcible
in its way, which I must omit, Gotama continues :

"Again, Yasettha, if this great river Rapti were
"full of water, even to the brim, and overflowing, and
"a man with business for the other side, bound for
"the other side, should come up and want to cross

THE PALI PITAKAS. 61

'' over, and he, standing on this bank, were to invoke
"the further bank, and say, 'Come hither, further
'"bank! come over to this side!' Now what think
" you, Yasettha ? "Would the further bank of the
" Eapti, by means of that man's invoking, and praying,
"and hoping, and praising, come over to this side?"
" Certainly not, Gotama ! "

" In just the same way, Yasettha, do the Brahmans,
versed in the three Yedas — but omitting the prac-
tice of those qualities which really make a man a
Brahman, and adhering to those things which really
make men not Brahmans — say thus : ' Indra we call
' upon : Soma we call upon : Yaruna we call upon :
' Isana we call upon : Pajapati we call upon : Brahma
' we call upon : Mahiddhi we call upon : Yama we
' call upon ! ' Yerily, Yasettha, that these Brahmans
— so long as they omit the practice of virtue, and
follow after evil — that they, by reason of their
invoking, and praying, and hoping, and praising,
should, after death, and when the body is dissolved,
become united with Brahma — verily, such a condi-
tion of things has no existence I"
Then, by other similes and other questions, each as
elaborately worked out, Gotama shows how yielding to
one's senses and one's lusts, how malice, sloth, pride,
self -righteousness and doubt, must in fact be bonds and
hindrances and entanglements, which, from Yasettha's
own point of view, will prevent any real union with

C2 THE PALI PITAKAS.

God. And he concludes his last point, and with it the
negative side of his argument, thus :

"Then you say, Yasettha, that the Brahmans are
" in possession of wives and wealth, and that Brahma
"is not. Can there then be agreement and likeness
"between the Brahmans, with their wives and pro-
"perty, and Brahma, who has none of these things?"
" Certainly not, Gotama!"

"And you say too, Vasettha, that the Brahmans
"bear anger and malice in their hearts, and are sinful
"and uncontrolled, whilst Brahma is free from anger
"and malice, and is sinless, and has self-mastery.
"IN'ow can there then be concord and likeness between
"the Brahmans and Brahma?"
"Certainly not, Gotama!"

"Very well then, Yasettha! That these Brah-
' mans, versed though they be in their three Yedas,
'and yet bearing anger and malice in their hearts,
'sinful and uncontrolled, should, after death and
' when the body is dissolved, become united to Brahma,
' who is just the opposite of all this — such a condition
' of things has no existence !

" So that thus, then, Yasettha, the Brahmans, while
'they sit down in confidence in their knowledge of
' the Yedas, are really sinking down in mire. And
' so sinking, they are arriving only at despair, think-
' ing the while that they are crossing over into some
' happier land ! Therefore is it that the three-fold

THE PALI PITAKAS. 63

"wisdom of the Brahmans, wise in the Vedas, is called
"a waterless desert, their three-fold wisdom is called
"a pathless jungle, their three-fold wisdom is called
"destruction!"

Yasettha, deeply moved, asks the Master whether
he can show the way to union with Brahma, and, when
he hears that he can, humbly beseeches him to do so,
closing his appeal with the words, " Let the venerable
Gotama save the Brahman race."

Then the Master sets forth his scheme of elementary
morality, which, as was called attention to above, is
below and introductory to the higher morality of the
Noble Path. With a great deal of it we cannot agree,
but it is not the less historically interesting on that
account. As he is addressing Vasettha and Bharad-
vaja, he first lays stress upon the advantages of joining
his Order ; but this was not considered in early Bud-
dhism to be necessary, though it was held to be condu-
cive, to the practice of either the lower morality here
described, or the more advanced condition of those who
have entered the Path. What we are now to hear is
not a complete statement of the Buddha's own view of
life — that would be a description of Arahatship — but
the Buddha's answer to the particular question pro-
pounded to him, namely, What is the right way to a
state of union with Brahma ? Gotama begins :

" Know, Yasettha, that from time to time a Tathagata
"is born into the world, a fully Enlightened One,

64 THE PALI PITAKAS.

blessed and worthy, abounding in wisdom and good-
ness, bapjDy, with knowledge of the world, unsur-
passed as a guide to erring mortals, a teacher of
gods and men, a Blessed Buddha. He, by himself,
thoroughly understands, and sees, as it were, face to
face this universe — the world below with all its
spirits, and the worlds above, of Mara and of Brahma
— and all creatures, Samanas and Brahmans, gods
and men, and he then makes his knowledge known
to others. The truth doth he proclaim both in its
letter and in its spirit, lovely in its origin, lovely in
its progress, lovely in its consummation : the higher
life doth he make known, in all its purity and in all
its perfectness.

" A householder (gahapati), or one of his children,
or a man of inferior birth in any class, listens to that
truth.^ On hearing the truth he has faith in the
Tathagata, and when he has acquired that faith he
thus considers with himself:

" ' Full of hindrances is household life, a path defiled
' by passion : free as the air is the life of him who
' has renounced all worldly things. How difficult is
' it for the man who dwells at home to live the higher
'life in all its fulness, in all its purity, in all its
' bright perfection ! Let me then cut off my hair and

^ The point is, that the acceptance of this " Doctrine and Disci-
pline" is open to all, not of course that Brahmans never accept it.

THE PALI PITAKAS. 65

' ' beard, let me clothe myself in the orange-coloured
' ' robes, and let me go forth from a household life into
^ ' the homeless state !'

"Then before long, forsaking his portion of wealth,
'be it great or be it small; forsaking his circle of
' relatives, be they many or be they few, he cuts off
'his hair and beard, he clothes himself in the orange-
' coloured robes, and he goes forth from the household
' life into the homeless state.

"When he has thus become a recluse, he passes a
'life self-restrained according to the rules of the
' Patimokkha ; uprightness is his delight, and he sees
' danger in the least of those things he should avoid ;
' he adopts and trains himself in the precepts ; he
' encompasses himself with holiness in word and deed ;
' he sustains his life by means that are quite pure ;
' good is his conduct, guarded the door of his senses ;
' mindful and self-possessed, he is altogethe± happy ! " ^

^ The argument is resumed after the Three Silas, or Descriptions
of Conduct — a text, doubtless older than tlie Suttas in which it
occurs, setting forth the distinguishing moral characteristics of a
member of the Order.

The First Sila is an expansion of the Ten Precepts ("Bud-
dhism," p. 160), but omitting the fifth, against the use of intoxi-
cating drinks. The Second Slla is a further expansion of the
first and then of the last four, and finally of the fourth Precept.
The Third Sila is directed against auguries, divinations, prophecies,
astrology, quackery, ritualism, and the worship of gods (including
Brahma).

These Three Silas may perhaps have been inserted in the Sutta

F

66 THE PALI PITAKAS.

*' J^ow wherein, Vasettha, is his conduct good ?

" Herein, 0 Vasettha, that putting away the murder
" of that which lives, he abstains from destroying life.
"The cudgel and the sword he lays aside; and, full of
"modesty and pity, he is compassionate and kind to
" all creatures that have life !

" This is the kind of goodness that he has.

" Putting away the theft of that which is not his,
"he abstains from taking anything not given. He
" takes only what is given, therewith is he content, and
" he passes his life in honesty and in purity of heart !

" This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has.

" Putting away unchastity, he lives a life of chastity
" and purity, averse to the low habit of sexual inter-
" course.

" This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has.

"Putting away lying, he abstains from speaking
" falsehood. He speaks truth, from the truth he never
" swerves ; faithful and trustworthy, he injures not his
"fellow-man by deceit.

" This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has.

"Putting away slander, he abstains from calumny.
" What he hears here he repeats not elsewhere to raise
"a quarrel against the people here: what he hears

as a kind of counterpoise to the Tlii-ee Veclas. Our Sutta really
reads better without them ; but they are interesting in themselves,
and the third is especially valuable as evidence f ancient customa
and beliefs.

THE PALI PITAKAS. 67

"elsewhere he repeats not here to raise a quarrel
"against the people there. Thus he lives as a binder
"together of those who are divided, an encourager of
" those who are friends, a peacemaker, a lover of peace,
"impassioned for peace, a speaker of words that make
"for peace.

" This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has.

"Putting away bitterness of speech, he abstains
"from harsh language. Whatever word is humane,
" pleasant to the ear, lovely, reaching to the heart,
" urbane, pleasing to the people, beloved of the people
" — such are the words he speaks.

" This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has.

" Putting away foolish talk, he abstains from vain
"conversation. In season he speaks; bespeaks that
" which is ; he speaks fact ; he utters good doctrine ; he
" utters good discipline ; he speaks, and at the right
" time, that which redounds to profit, is well-grounded,
"is well-defined, and is full of wisdom.

"This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has."

Other paragraphs follow, first shorter and then
longer, which concern only members of the Order, and
not laymen. Then a series of still longer paragraphs,
dissuading from the practice of all the various customs
and ceremonies dependent upon the Animism then, and
unfortunately long afterwards, current in India. We
find in these lists all kinds of auguries, divinations,
interpretations of omens, marks on the body, and

f2

68 THE PALI PITAKAS.

dreams; offerings, sacrifices, spells, prophecies, astro-
logy; casuistry, vows, rituals and ceremonies, only
mentioned to be condemned as worse than useless.
And Gotama then addresses himself to the positive
side of his argument, to the enumeration of the prac-
tices that he puts in place of these Animistic follies.

" And he lets his mind pervade one quarter of the
"world with thoughts of Love; and so the second,
"and so the third, and so the fourth. And thus the
"whole wide world, above, below, around, and every-
" where, does he continue to pervade with heart
"of Love, far-reaching, grown great and beyond
"measure !"

This paragraph is then repeated, substituting for
Love, in the first paragraph Pity, in the second Sym-
pathy, in the third Evenness of Mind. And to each
of these there is a simile and a conclusion, thus :

" Just, Yasettha, as a mighty trumpeter makes him-
"self heard — and that without difficulty — in all the
"four directions, even so of all things that have shape
"or life, there is not one that he passes by or leaves
"aside, but regards them all with mind set free and
" deep-felt love !

"Verily, this, Vasettha, is the way to a state of
" union with Brahma !"

Finally, after comparing the condition of heart of
the man who acts up to all these things with the
character which Vasettha acknowledges that the Brah-

THE PALI PITAKAS. 69

mans themselves ascribe to Brahma, the conclusion is
reached :

" Then in sooth, Yasettha, that such a man — who is
''kind, and full of love, and pure in mind, and master
"of himself — that he, after death and when the body
"is dissolved, should become united with Brahma,
" such a condition of things is every way possible !"

After this, we cannot be surprised that the Sutta
again, as in the former case, closes with the statement
that "Yasettha and Bharadvaja addressed the Blessed
" One, and said :

"Most excellent, Lord, are the words of thy mouth,
' most excellent ! Just as if a man were to set up
' that which is thrown down, or were to reveal that
' which is hidden away, or were to point out the right
' road to him who has gone astray, or were to bring
'a lamp into the darkness, so that those who have
'eyes can see external forms; — just even so. Lord,
'has the truth been made known to us, in many a
'figure, by the Blessed One. And we, even we,
'betake ourselves. Lord, to the Blessed One as our
'refuge, to the Truth, and to the Brotherhood.
'May the Blessed One accept us as disciples, as
'true believers, from this day forth, as long as life
'endures!"

I will only add, to avoid a very natural misconcep-
tion, that such a union with Brahma as is here referred
to, is not supposed, in early Buddhism, to be the

70 THE PALI PlTAKAS.

highest thing which men should seek after. According
to the theory of Karma, which will be explained in
the next Lecture, it would only be a new being, who
has no conscious personal identity with the man who
has lived such a life, who would thus achieve a merely
temporary union with a merely temporary Brahma.
There can be no finality in such a union ; it must end,
like every other life, save that of the Arahat, in re-
birth. And far better than that, an aim far worthier
of the truly intelligent man, is to reach here on earth
the Nirvana of a perfect life in Arahatship, which, it
is true, includes all that we have heard of just now,
but which also includes much more.

I will now only detain you — and I must thank you
for listening with so much attention to what has been
a necessary, though I am afraid a somewhat tedious,
sketch of the early Buddhist literature — while I make
an announcement which I am sure you will hear with
pleasure. As was said in the course of the Lecture,
the Vinaya Pitaka, the Collection of the Eules of the
Order, is already in the course of publication, and the
more important parts of it are being translated into
English. But the Suttas, which seem to me to be in
many respects far more valuable and interesting, still
lie buried and unpublished in Pali MSS., which few

THE PALI PITAKAS. 71

people can read and fewer still can understand. There
has for some time been a correspondence going on
between the leading Pali scholars in Europe, and they
have all received with a welcome, not short of enthu-
siastic, a proposal to form a Society for the publication
of the original texts of the whole of these curious and
ancient books. The scholars referred to are willing to
give their services gratuitously, and I trust before long
we shall have both texts and translations into English
of all the Suttas, and of the supplementary Abhi-
dhamma books, available for the use of those who wish
to jS.nd out what early Buddhism really was. All that
is wanted is, that a few of those who have the money
should join with those who have the necessary know-
ledge, by subscribing towards the cost of printing.
I am empowered, therefore, by the Committee of the
Pali Text Society, as the young Society will be called,
to inform you to-day of its birth. Two himdred
subscribers of a guinea a-year will make it a success.
The scholars who will do the work without pecuniary
reward of any kind, have already promised to subscribe
themselves, and a few donations of larger sums would
make the matter comparatively easy. I need say
nothing on the importance of such an undertaking,
especially with reference to a right understanding of
the origin and growth of religious belief. Your pre-
sence here to-day sufficiently proves your sympathy
with such an object. I will only conclude, therefore,

72 THE PALI PITAKAS.

with an earnest appeal to those who can help in this
matter, to give their cordial and practical co-operation
to a cause so good, that all who are fortunate enough
to be fellow- workers in it will feel a just pride when
it has been carried by their aid to a successful accom-
plishment.^

^ I have thought it right, after some hesitation, to retain these
last sentences as they originally stood. A few hundred pounds are
still required to make up the necessary amount ; and in a wealthy
country like England, where thousands are constantly being raised
for objects not more deserving, I trust that the deficiency will, before
long, be entirely supplied by those who sympathize with the pro-
posed undertaking. A fuller statement of the present state of the
Society will be found at the end of the volume, and any one who is
willing to help can there see what is still required.

LECTURE III.
THE BUDDHIST THEOEY OF KAr^IA.

In the first Lecture we endeavoured to estimate tlie
general position of Buddhism in the religious history,
firstly of India, and secondly of the world at large.
In the closing sentences stress was laid upon the fact
that Buddhism was in a great degree the pouring of
new wine into old bottles, and the disastrous effect of
its method in this respect was touched upon. In no
particular was this more the case than in its teaching
about the belief, then an unquestioned and universal
belief in India, of the transmigration of souls.

This doctrine, as has been already pointed out, is
entirely absent from the Yedas; and the question
naturally arises, Where did it come from? Anthro-
pologists seem to be of the opinion that it was world-
wide in its distribution, and that it may be found
everywhere in the lower stages of civilization. But
they must admit that there is not the least evidence

rr

4 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

to show that the Aryans, before their dispersion, had
passed through this stage of belief; and I venture to
doubt whether the doctrine of the transmigration of souls
has ever been independently arrived at or generally
held among any one of the seven races into which the
Aryans were subsequently distributed. This suggestion
has, I am afraid, the disadvantage of novelty ; but the
importance of the fact, if it turn out to be true, will, I
trust, justify the desire at least to raise a question the
decision of which I must leave to abler hands. If the
Aryan races cannot be shown to have entertained a
belief otherwise so widely spread, it shows how great
should be the caution with which we can venture to
argue from the beliefs of one race to those of another ;
and it also offers a fresh confirmation of the fact that the
course of early religious belief is by no means every-
where quite the same. The general term Animism is,
indeed, a convenient expression for a rudimentary phi-
losophy, which seems to have been almost, if not quite,
universal. But races who have not as yet advanced
beyond it, who see spirits everywhere, and find in the
action of spirits a natural explanation of every myste-
rious event, are not likely to be capable of simulta-
neously entertaining very many ideas, or of carrying
out any general principle to its logical conclusions. Of
the various delusions that result from this Animistic
conception of things, each individual, each tribe, has
held only a few ; the details themselves are necessarily,

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 75

therefore, different; some are more persistent than
others, and none are universal.

Mr. Tylor, in his "Primitive Culture," which always
seems to me one of the most interesting books that
our language contains, has carefully collected evidence
regarding various curious notions allied to the Indian
belief in the transmigration of souls.^ Eut among the
many instances he has adduced, there is not one which
shows the idea among any Aryan people uninfluenced
from outside. Indeed, the only instances he gives
which are Aryan at all, are the well-known cases of
Pythagoras and Plato; and while neither of these
writers held the Indian notion, either in its Hindu or
in its Buddhist form, neither of them have preserved
to us, in the views they did hold, a product of the
native mind of the Greeks. Their views of the con-
tinued existence after death of the human soul in the
bodies of other men, or of beasts, are philosophical
speculations of isolated thinkers acquainted with foreign
modes of thought, not the universally accepted beliefs
of ordinary people. They are most probably modifi-
cations of Egyptian ideas (such as those referred to by
Herodotus, ii. 123), which are themselves very different
from the Indian belief.

1 Vol. ii. pp. I— 10.

76 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA,

Mr. Tyler miglit have mentioned Empedocles, who
is reported to have said that he had been " a boy, a
"girl, a bush, a bird, a fish.''^ Or he might have
quoted Caesar's report of a supposed tenet of the Druids
that "souls do not die, but pass at death from one
to another; and that this was a great incentive to
virtue, for the fear of death was disregarded." ^ And
my father has pointed out to me a curious Irish legend,
recorded in the so-called Book of Balimote, which cer-
tainly savours strongly of transmigration. As this work
is not easily accessible, I will quote the passage. The
poet is excusing himself for beginning his history a
thousand years before his hero was born. It seems that
his hero Avas really alive all the while.

"1. Tuan, son of Cairill, as we are told,
Was freed from sin by Jesus ;
One hundred years complete he lived,
He lived in blooming manhood.

"2. Three hundred years in the shape of a wild ox
He lived on the open extensive plains ;
Two hundred and five years he lived
In the shape of a wild boar.

* Diog. Laert, viii. 12.

2 De Bello Gallico, vi. 14. Compare Diodor. Sic. v. 28.

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 77

"3. Three hundred years he was still in the flesh
In the shape of an old bird;
One hundred delightful years he lived
In the shape of a salmon in the flood.

''4. A fisherman caught him in his net,
He brought it to the king's palace ;
When the bright salmon was there seen,
The queen immediately longed for it.

"5. It was forthwith dressed for her,
Which she alone ate entire ;
The beauteous queen became pregnant.
The issue of which was Tuan."^

But the Book of Balimote is assigned by Irish
scholars to the latter part of the 14th century f" and we
may well be excused for a little scepticism as to the
complete correctness of Caesar's information respecting
the Druids, when we find that it stands so altogether
isolated, and that other details he gives about them are
confessedly inaccurate.

1 Tuan seems to have been a convert of Columkill (Columba),
a sixth-century Irish saint. — Celtic Scotland, a History of
Ancient Albion, by William F. Skene, 1880, Vol. iii. p. 98.

"* My authority for this statement is a private letter from Professor
Rhys, who refers to Eugene O'Curry, Manners and Customs of
tlie Ancient Irish, A^ol. iii. p. 60.

78 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

Apart, however, from the Aryan races, the belief in
the passage of the soul after death, not to another
world only, but also into other human bodies in this
world, is not uncommon, and has evidently had an
independent origin in different times and countries.
The various tribes of North- American Indians believed
that the soul animating the body of an infant was the
soul of some deceased person ; enslaved negroes, accor-
ding to Mr. Tylor, have been known to commit suicide,
that they may revive in their native land; and the
aborigines of Australia hold white men to be the manes
or ghosts of their own dead. They are said to express
this in the simple formula, " Black-fellow tumble down,
"jump up White-fellow;" and a native hanged at
Melbourne is represented to have given vent to the
hopeful belief that he would "jump up White-fellow
" and have lots of sixpences." I may add that the
Jews, at different periods of their history, seem to
have held a similar doctrine ; for though I do not hold
with those commentators who have discovered a refer-
ence to it in the New Testament, it is found distinctly
in several parts of the Talmud.^

^ John i, 21, ix. 2. Hershon's Talmudic Miscellany, pp.
40, 57, 325—328 ; Goldstlicker's Remains, &c., i. 215. The
alternative in Jolin ix. 2, "Who did sin, this man or his parents,
" that he should be born blind?" is one that would naturally occur
to a Jew, who held, in tlie first place, that the " sins" of the parents

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARiTA. 79

And souls are not supposed to come back only as
men. Mr. Tylor shows how certain tribes in North
and South America, and in various parts of Africa,
" drawing no definite line of demarcation between the
" souls of men and beasts, admit without difficulty the
"transmission of human souls into the bodies of the
"lower animals." We have seen above that similar
ideas have been entertained, from time to time, by
isolated thinkers in Egypt, Italy and Greece, and they
may be found even in Christian countries. Origen,
who was a Universal Eestitutionist, speaks of a cognate
theory ; and in later times Descartes and Leibnitz and
Lessing have leant in the same direction.' And a
learned author has drawn up a list of no less than 4977
books which treat, either in whole or in part, of the
origin and destiny of the soul, and among these as
many as 188 are on the Souls of Beasts.^ Of these, I
will only mention here two — quite lately published —
a work by the well-known naturalist, the Eev. T. G.

were visited also upon the children; and, secondly, that sin was
possible already in the womb, since the embryo, in its later stages,
was possessed of consciousness. See the speculations of the Rabbis
referred to by Lightfoot in his comment on the verse. The Augus-
tinian theory of " peccatum originale" might equally give rise to
such a question as the disciples are here represented to have put.

^ See Appendix.

2 Prof. Ezra Abbott's valuable Bibliography of the subject,
annexed to AVilliam R. Alger's Doctrine of a Future Life,
New York, 1878.

80 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

Wood, on Animals Here and Hereafter, and M.
Louis Figuier's Le Lendemain de la Mort. Both of
these teach the immortality of animals, and the French
writer advocates a complete theory of transmigration.

r^

"Now we unfortunately have not, and can never hope
to have, any information as to the ancient beliefs of
the tribes who had entered India from the north-west
before the Aryans, and whom the Aryans conquered
and absorbed into their own community. Modern evi-
dence of the beliefs now held among the hill tribes of
India cannot be depended upon as affording any safe
ground for conjecture in this respect ; much less modern
evidence as to the details of the Animism still current
among their possibly distant relatives in other parts of
the world, such as the Finns or Lapps. All that can be
said is, that the Aryans did not bring a belief in transmi-
gration of any kind with them into India. If, centuries
before, they had ever entertained such ideas, which is
wholly problematical, they had completely outgrown
them. That they could have developed such ideas quite
independently after their arrival in India, after the very
different fancies recorded in the Vedas had become an
accepted faith among them, is of course possible, but it
is unlikely. No parallel instance could, at present at
least, be adduced from religious history elsewhere ; and

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 81

had they done so, we should expect to find more dis-
tinct traces in the later pre-Buddhistic literature of the
beginnings and gradual progress of the new theory.
But the Brahmanas still teach that the souls of men
enter upon one new life — good or bad according to
their conduct here — in the other worlds ; and it is in
rare passages of some of the earlier Upanishads that
we first find the transmigration theory suddenly appear-
ing in nearly perfect completeness.^

Thus in the Chandogya Upanishadj in a passage

found also in the Brihad Aranyaka, we read : " Those

'whose conduct has been good will quickly attain

' some good birth, birth as a Brahmana, or a Kshatriya,

'or a Yaisya."2

And in the Kaushitaki Brahmana IJpanishad: "All
' who depart from this world go to the moon. In the
'bright fortnight the moon is gladdened by their
' spirits, but in the dark fortnight it sends them forth
'into new births. Verily the moon is the door of
'heaven. Him who rejects it, it sends on beyond;
'but whoso rejects it not, him it rains down upon this
' world. And here is he born either as a worm, or a
' grasshopper, or a fish, or a bird, or a lion, or a boar,

^ The theory occurs also in later Upanishads, such as the
GarbhaUp. (Weber, Ind. Stud. ii. pp. 69, 70); but these are post-
Buddhistic.

2 Chandogya Upanishad, V. 10. See Max IMuUer, Sacred
Books of the East, Vol. i. p. 84.

G

82 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OP KARMA.

"or a serpent, or a tiger, or a man, or some other
" creature, according to his deeds and his knowledge."^
y~i The belief in transmigration is here united with a
notion that souls go first to the moon, a theory so
curiously common that I have ventured to quote below
some striking examples of it.^ But we are concerned
here only with the transmigration theory, and the pas-
sages now given show that that theory was already
completely accepted in India at the time when these
Upanishads were composed, which may be fixed ap-
proximately about 600 years before the Christian era.
The absence of any trace of the theory before that time
seems to me to point, as the most probable conclusion,
to the hypothesis that the pre- Aryan occupants of the
valley of the Ganges were believers in something of
the kind, and that the Aryans first derived the prin-
ciple of the idea from them ; but not until long after
the Aryans had entered India, and until the conquerors
and the conquered had been fused together into one
people.

At that time the schools of the philosophizing Brah-
mans were already in full vigour ; and though it is not
easy to trace any modifications of the doctrine in pre-
Buddhistic literature, it is quite possible that the idea

^ Kaushitaki Brahmana Upanisliad, ed. Cowell, p. 146.
^ See Appendix.

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 83

as derived by the Aryans extended only to the return
of men's souls to a new existence in the outward form
of men, plants or animals; and that the Brahmans
themselves, or one or other of the heterodox teachers
before Euddha, added the belief in the eternity of
this transmigration, which has been so fundamental a
part of the theory since the time of the rise of Bud-
dhism. But Gotama himself may have added this part
of the theory, for we have no clear evidence of it
before he lived.

In this respect it would be well here to give some
account of the general idea of transmigration as held
in common throughout India by Hindiis after the fall
of Buddhism. Parts of this belief may well be due
to the influence of Buddhism, but it may also contain
traces of ideas current when Buddhism arose, and of
which we have no evidence from books known to be
older than the time of Gotama. This general belief
is, shortly stated, as follows.

There is within the body of every man a soul,
which, at the death of the body, flies away from it
like a bird out of a cage, and enters upon a new life
(at once, without going to the moon), either in one of
the heavens, in one of the hells, or on this earth. The
only exception is in the rare case of a man having in
this life acquired a true knowledge of God. According
to the pre-Buddhistic theory, the soul of such a man
goes along the path of the gods to God, and being

g2

84 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

united with Him enters upon an immortal life in which
his individuality is not extinguished. In the later
theory, his soul is directly absorbed into the Great
Soul, is lost in it, and has no longer any independent
existence.

The souls of all other men enter, after the death of
the body, upon a new existence in one or other of the
many different modes of being. If in heaven or in
hell, the soul itself becomes a god or a demon without
entering a body ; all superhuman beings, save the great
gods, being looked upon as not eternal, but merely
temporary creatures. If the soul returns to earth, it
may, or may not, enter a new body ; and this either of
a human being, an animal, a plant, or even a material
object. For all these are possessed of souls, and there
is no essential difference between their souls and the
souls of men — all being alike mere sparks of the Great
Spirit, who is the only real existence.

The outward condition of the soul is, in each new
birth, determined by its actions in a previous birth ;
but by each action in succession, and not by the
balance struck after the evil has been reckoned off
against the good. A good man who has once uttered
a slander may spend a hundred thousand years as a god
in consequence of his goodness, and, when the power of
his good actions is exhausted, may be born as a dumb
man on account of his transgression ; and a robber,
who has once done an act of mercy, may come to life

IHE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 85

m a king's body as the result of his virtue, and then
suffer torments for ages in hell or as a ghost without
a body, or be re-born many times as a slave or an
outcast, in consequence of his evil life. The relation
between the act and its fruit, between the Karma and
its Yipaka, was practically looked upon as being so
uncertain, undetermined and even arbitrary, that it is
impossible to trace in ordinary cases any law or propor-
tion between the cause and the effect. But the effect
was considered to follow the cause inevitably and
naturally, without the intervention of any deity to
apportion the reward or punishment. And in special
cases there was a vague feeling of a certain relation
between the conduct and its result. Offences against
the Brahmans would unquestionably produce the most
evil fruit with the greatest certainty and the greatest
speed, and the performance of right sacrifices and libe-
rality to the priests would in the shortest time bring
about the happiest effect. All that was absolutely cer-
tain was that each act of the soul, good or bad, must
work out its full effect to the sweet or bitter end.

There is no escape, according to this theory, from the
result of any act ; though it is only the consequences of
its own acts that each soul has to endure. The force has
been set in motion by itself, and can never stop ; and its
effect can never be foretold. If evil, it can never be
modified or prevented, for it depends on a cause already
completed, that is now for ever beyond the soul's

86 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KAEMA.

control. There is even no continuing consciousness,
no memory of the past that could guide the soul to any
knowledge of its fate. The only advantage open to it
is to add in this life to the sum of its good actions, that
they may bear fruit with the rest. And even this can
only happen in some future life under essentially the
same conditions as the present one ; subject, like the
present one, to old age, decay and death ; and affording
opportunity, like the present one, for the commission
of errors, ignorances or sins, which in their turn must
inevitably produce their due effect of sickness, disabi-
lity or woe. Thus is the soul tossed about from life to
life, from billow to billow in the great ocean of trans-
migration. And there is no escape save for the very
few who, during their birth as men, attain to a right
knowledge of the Great Spirit; and thus enter into
immortality, or, as the later philosophers taught, are
absorbed into the Divine Essence.

As this theory is contradictory to ideas commonly
held among us, it will be considered by many, without
any further argument, to carry with it its own con-
demnation as a mere farrago of baseless fancies. The
founder of Buddhism found something very like it an
accepted belief, and he dealt with it as some Broad-

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 87

churchmen deal with beliefs accepted now. He endea-
voured to bring it into harmony with his new ideas by-
putting new meanings into the old phrases. And the
extent of the modifications he introduced was deter-
mined by the method which he followed throughout
the formulation of his whole system when he had to
deal with the inherited beliefs. Like many earnest
religious teachers of the present day, he did not leave
them alone, and endeavour to arrive at truth by an
examination of the evidence at his command, pausing
humbly where incertitude began. But he rejected only
those parts of his earliest creed which were clearly
inconsistent with what he held to be true. In such
cases, the ultimate beliefs accepted are not necessarily
more true than those that are rejected; they are only
less easily proved false.

Now the doctrine of a former existence, like the
allied doctrine of a future life, cannot be disproved,
for it deals with a sphere beyond the reach of human
experience. And the doctrine that whatsoever a man
reaps that he himself must also have sown, appealed as
strongly to ethical natures as the very different, though
allied, doctrine, that "whatsoever a man soweth that
"shall he also reap," appeals to us now. These doc-
trines were retained by Gotama; and he also taught
the eternal persistence in ordinary cases of the force of
Karma. But he changed the whole aspect and prac-
tical effect of the doctrines he retained by disconnecting

88 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

them from the soul-theory out of which they had grown
and on which they had hitherto depended.

The various religious faiths professed in Europe are
so inextricably interwoven with the belief in a soul,
that it is very difficult in this respect rightly to appre-
ciate the Buddhist point of view. We must never
forget that the earliest Buddhism looks with a certain
contempt and aversion on all these discussions about
the future life. The Buddhist doctrine is : " Try to
" get as near to wisdom and goodness as you can in
"this life. Trouble not yourselves about the gods.
" Disturb yourself not by curiosities or desires about
"any future existence. Seek only after the fruit of
" the noble path of self -culture and of self-control !"

Thus in the Sabbasawa Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya
we read :

"It is by his consideration of those things which
"ought not to be considered, and by his non-consider-
" ation of those things which ought to be considered,
"that wrong leanings of the mind, which had not
" arisen before, arise within him ; and wrong leanings
" of the mind, which had arisen before, grow great !

" Unwisely doth he consider thus : ' Have I existed
" ' during the ages that are past, or have I not ? What
" ' was I during the ages that are past ? How was I

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 89

' * during the ages tliat are past ? Having been what,
' ' what did I become in the ages that are past ? Shall
' * I exist during the ages of the future, or shall I not ?
' ' What shall I be during the ages of the future ?
' * How shall I be during the ages of the future ?
' ' Having been what, what shall I become during the
' ' ages of the future ?' Or he debates within himself
' as to the present : ' Do I after all exist, or am I not ?
' ' How am I ? This is a being ; whence now did it
' ' come, and whither will it go ?' "

"In him thus unwisely considering, there springs
'up one or other of the six absurd notions" [all of
which are about the soul and are then set out]. " This,
' brethren, is called the walking in delusion, the jungle,
'the wilderness, the puppet-show, the writhing, the
'fetter of delusion !"....

"But the wise man, brethren, the disciple walking
' in the noble path, who knows those who are walking
' in the noble path, who comprehends, and is trained
' according to the doctrine of the noble path ....
' he understands both what things ought to be consi-
' dered, and what things ought not to be considered.
'And, thus understanding, the things that ought to
'be considered, those he considers; and the things
'that ought not to be considered, those he does not
'consider."^

1 Eh. D. Buddhist Suttas from the Pali, pp. 298—300.

90 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

This sounds very much like the opinions we have
lately become accustomed to hear labelled as Agnos-
ticism. But any one who has read the Pali Suttas
will understand how Gotama would have rejected the
epithet with an indignation none the less real for its
mildness and benignity. His was essentially a positive,
not a negative system. His objections to metaphysical
discussions, or even musings, about the past or future
conditions of the "soul," may be compared to the dis-
like of a practical politician, anxious to get on with
arrears of work, to obstructive motions for the adjourn-
ment of the House. That those objections should be
pitched upon as the characteristic mark of his opinions,
as the appropriate ground for the name of his teaching,
would have seemed to him ridiculous. Eightly or
wrongly, he had an intense consciousness of insight;
and so far from accepting the title of Agnostic, would
have called himself, in the fullest possible sense, a
Gnostic.

The unthinking multitude received, without a doubt,
the soul-creed their fathers had held for hundreds, and
probably for thousands, of years. The philosophers
indulged in numberless speculations, which only agreed
in regarding the subject as worth discussing. It is
true he refused to follow their method, and refusal has
a negative side. But in relation to them his position
cannot rightly be called negative : it was the relation

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 91

of the astronomer to the astrologer, of the chemist to
the alchemist.

The parallelism of relation last referred to holds good
also in other respects. History shows us that there
was no sudden jump from folly to science, though
the abandoning of vain hopes was a turning-point,
a necessary step, in the progress of knowledge.
Chemistry was the child of alchemy, and bore at first
a strange likeness to its mother. So also Gotama,
though he had reached the shore, stood where his feet
were washed by the waves of the sea. That part of
the then prevalent transmigration theory which could
not be proved false seemed to meet a deeply-felt neces-
sity, seemed to supply a moral cause which would
explain the unequal distribution here of happiness or
woe, so utterly inconsistent with the present characters
of men. He still therefore talked of men's previous
existence, but by no means in the way that he is
generally represented to have done.

The transmigration of souls, very commonly sup-
posed to be a fundamental part of Buddhism, has never
been found mentioned at all, or even referred to, in
the Pali Pitakas. I have no hesitation in maintaining,
therefore, that Gotama did not teach the transmi-
gration of souls. What he did teach would be
better summarized, if we wish to retain the word trans-

92 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

L migration, as the transmigration of character. But
it would be more accurate to drop the word transmi-
gration altogether when speaking of Buddhism, and
to call its doctrine the doctrine of Karma. Gotama
held that after the death of any being, whether human
or not, there survived nothing at all but that being's
"Karma," the result, that is, of its mental and bodily-
actions. Every individual, whether human or divine,
was the last inheritor and the last result of the Karma
of a long series of past individuals — a series so long
that its beginning is beyond the reach of calculation,
and its end will be coincident with the destruction of
the world. From this it would follow that each genera-
tion was the exact, inevitable and natural result of the
generation that had preceded it, that generation of the
former one, and so on in succession during a practi-
cally endless past.

One of the latest speculations now being put forward
among ourselves would seek to explain each man's
character, and even his outward condition in life, by
the character he inherited from his ancestors, a cha-
racter gradually formed during a practically endless
series of past existences, modified only by the condi-
tions into which he was born, those very conditions
being also in like manner the last result of a practically

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 93

endless series of past causes. Gotama's speculation
might be stated in the same words. But it attempted
also to explain, in a way different from that which would
be adopted by the exponents of the modern theory, that
strange problem which it is also the motive of the won-
derful drama of the Book of Job to explain — the fact that
the actual distribution here of good fortune or misery is
entirely independent of the moral qualities which men
call good or bad. "We cannot wonder that a teacher,
whose whole system was so essentially an ethical re-
formation, should have felt it incumbent upon him to
seek an explanation of this apparent injustice. And
all the more so, since the belief he had inherited, the
theory of the transmigration of souls, had provided a
solution perfectly sufficient to any one who could accept
that belief. In the older theory, it was the same soul
that had done evil which suffered the penalty (or rather
had to bear the inevitable consequence) of its wrong-
doing ; it was one and the same soul that did a good
deed and that earned the reward (or rather that expe-
rienced the natural result of its goodness). In order
to save the moral cause, Gotama retained the idea
of personal identity. But he had discarded the theory
of the presence, within each human body, of a soul
which could have a separate and eternal existence.^
He therefore established a new identity between the

^ See, on this point, below, Lecture VI.

94 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

individuals in the chain of existence, which he, like
his forerunners, acknowledged, by the new assertion
that that which made two beings to be the same being
was — ^not soul, but — Karma. He taught, as the modern
speculation does, a real connection of cause and effect
between persons in the present life and persons in a
past life ; but the connection was not a physical one
between different individuals, it was a moral one
between individuals who, according to the Buddhist
belief, were the same.

The Christian would deny that the two persons are
the same, for there is no continuing consciousness, no
passage of a soul, or of an I in any sense, from the one
to the other. The Evolutionist would say that the con-
centration in one new individual of the result of the
Karma, the mental and bodily acts, of the one who has
ceased to be, is no vera causa, but a pure hypothesis.
But both will sympathize with the earnest seeking after
a cause, and the overpowering sense of the necessity of
justice, that gave rise to the formulation of the Bud-
dhist belief. And the more thorough-going the Evolu-
tionist, the more clear his vision of the long perspective
of history, the greater will be his appreciation of the
strangeness of the fact that a theory so far consistent
with what he holds to be true should have been possible
at all in so remote a past.

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 95

It is interesting to notice that the very point which
is the weakness of the theory — the supposed concen-
tration of the effect of the Karma in one new being — •
presented itself to the early Buddhists themselves as a
difficulty. They avoided it partly by explaining that
it was a particular thirst in the creature dying (a
craving, Tanha, which plays otherwise a great part
in the Buddhist theory), which actually caused the
birth of the new individual who was to inherit the
Karma of the former one. But how this took place,
how the craving desire produced this effect, was ac-
knowledged to be a mystery patent only to a Buddha.
I will not therefore dwell upon this further, except to
point out the very curious coincidence that Plato,
in adopting the Pythagorean transmigration into his
system, added to it a very similar theory.
He makes Socrates say in the Pheedo : ^
" The truth rather is, that the soul which is pure at
*' departing and draws after her no bodily taint, having
"never voluntarily had connection with the body,
"which she is ever avoiding, herself gathered into
"herself (for such abstraction has been the study of
"her life: and what does this mean but that she has
"been a true disciple of philosophy ....); that soul,
" I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible world,

1 Phfedo, 69 : Jowett's Translation, i. 457, ed. 1875. For the
context, see Appendix.

96 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

to the divine and immortal and rational .... and is
released from the error and folly of men, their fears

and wild passions and all other human ills But

the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at
the time of her departure, and is the companion and
servant of the body always, and is in love with and
fascinated by the body and by the desires and plea-
sures of the body, .... do you suppose that such a
soul will depart pure and unalloyed ?^ . . . . She is
held fast by the corporeal, which the continual asso-
ciation and constant care of the body have wrought
into her nature, .... is depressed and dragged down
again into the visible world. These must be the
souls .... who are compelled .... to wander ....
in payment of the penalty of their former evil ....
until, through the craving after the corporeal
which never leaves them, they are imprisoned finally
in another body. And they may be supposed to find
their prisons in the same natures which they have had
in their former lives.^ .... I mean to say that men
who have followed after gluttony, and wantonness,
and drunkenness, and have had no thought of avoid-
ing them, would pass into asses and animals of that

sort And those who have chosen the portion of

injustice, and tyranny, and violence, will pass into
wolves, or into hawks and kites And there is

I P. 458. 2 p_ 459,

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 97

no difficulty in assigning to all of them places accor-
ding to their several natures and propensities

Even among them, some are happier than others;
and the happiest, both in themselves and their place
of abode, are those who have practised the civil and
social virtues which are called temperance and justice,
and are acquired by habit and attention, without

philosophy and mind Because they may be

expected to pass into some gentle social nature which
is like their own, such as that of bees or wasps or ants,
or even back again into the form of man, and just and

moderate men to spring from them But he who

is a philosopher or lover of learning, and is entirely
pure at departing, is alone permitted to attain to the
divine nature."
Plato, it is true, lays down in this passage a theory
which, in a very fundamental part of it, the assertion
of the existence of souls within men's bodies, is dia-
metrically opposed to the Buddhist theory ; and even
with regard to the action of desire, he does not go as
far as the great Indian teacher. Gotama held that it
was equally desire which brought about, not only a
new existence as an animal, but also as a man or a god.
But when we find that the two greatest ethical thinkers
of antiquity have independently arrived at conclusions
so very similar, have agreed in ascribing to desires
entertained in this life so great, and to us so inconceiv-
able, a power over the future life, we may well hesitate

H

98 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

before we condemn the idea as intrinsically absurd. I
would submit that we must go further, and acknowledge
in this curious coincidence another very striking in-
stance of the most important fact which the compara-
tive study of Buddhism has to show, — I mean the fact,
that, given similar conditions, similar stages in the
course of religious inquiry, men's thoughts, even in
spite of the most unquestioned individual originality,
and though they have never produced quite the same
results, have constantly tended in similar directions.

This curious parallel — which, whatever the con-
clusion to be drawn from it, will, I trust, be thought
worthy to have been pointed out — may throw some
light upon the Buddhist theory. Life, according to
that theory, is a chain of existences, never ending,
and the sequences of which can never be foretold. It
follows, firstly, that it will be good to escape from the
chain, to attain to a condition that will be outside of
the circle of change, outside the reach of the causes of
change, and that will contain within itself the element
of finality.

The only such condition is, according to Buddhism,
that state of mind, to be reached in this life, in which
the craving desire just spoken of shall have ceased.
No new link will then be formed in the chain of exist-

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OE KARMA. 99

ence ; the Karma of tliat particular chain of lives will
cease to influence any longer any distinct individual ;
and there will be no more birth ; for birth, decay and
death, grief, lamentation and despair, will have come,
so far as regards that chain of lives, for ever to an end.

Now that state of mind is nothing else than Ara-
hatship. So that our discussion, as every right dis-
cussion of any part of Buddhism ought to do, has
brought us to that central point of the Buddha's
teaching, the goal, the hope, the aim of every good
and enlightened Buddhist, the "Excellent Way" of
seK-culture and of self-control.

As is said in the account of the closing days of
Gotama's life, " the Blessed One addressed the disciples
of Bhandagama, and said,^

" It is through not understanding and grasping four
" conditions (four things), 0 Brethren, that we have
" had to run so long, to wander so long, in this weary
"path of individuality, both you and I.

" And what are these four ?

" The noble conduct of life, the noble earnestness in
" meditation, the noble kind of wisdom, and the noble
" salvation of freedom. But when the noble kind of
" conduct of life, of earnestness in meditation, of wisdom,
"and of salvation by freedom, are seen face to face,
"and are comprehended, then is the craving for cxist-

^ Book of the Great Decease (iv. 2, 3) : Eh. D., Buddhist
Suttas from the Pali, pp. 64, 65.

h2

100 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARJIA.

*' ence rooted out, that wMch leads to renewed exist-
'^ ence is destroyed, and there is no more birth.

" Eighteousness, earnest thought, wisdom and free*

dom sublime,
"These are the truths realized by Gotama far

renowned.
"Knowing them, he, the Knower, proclaimed the

truth to the brethren.
"The Master, with eye divine, the Quencher of

griefs, is free !"
The four Dhammas or conditions called in this pas-
sage noble, are only one of many descriptions of what
constitutes Arahatship, the end of the so-called Noble
Path. But we cannot enlarge here upon Arahatship,
or the Noble Path. I can only say now that it has
many sides and many names, and that it is in reference
to this extinction of that foolish and ignorant three-fold
craving — the lust of the flesh, the lust of life, and the
pride of life— and of the three most immediate results
of that craving — viz. the inward fires of lust, hatred
and delusion — that Arahatship is called Nibbana or
Nirvana, a word which means "the going out, the
becoming extinct," and has often, therefore, by writers
ignorant of the first principles of Buddhism, been sup-
posed to mean the extinction of the soul ! It is the
" going out" of craving (Tanha) and of the three fires
just referred to.

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KAEMA. 101

It folloTrs that a good Buddhist must love righteous-
ness for its own sake, and not for any supposed bene-
fit that will accrue to him himself in a future life on
account of his righteousness. For Buddhism does not
teach any conscious identity between any two links
in the chain of life, and it holds that the perfection
of goodness and wisdom will actually put an end at
once and irrevocably to any continuation at all of the
good man's life in any sense.

As the Buddhist writers are fond of saying, the rela-
tion of the one life to the next is merely like that borne
by the flame of a lamp to the flame of another lamp
lighted by it. When the Arahat, the man made per-
fect according to the Buddhist faith, ceases to live, no
new lamp, no new sentient being, will be lighted by
the flame of any weak or ignorant longing entertained
by him. Alice in Wonderland puts the point exactly
when she asks the question, full of the delicious naivete
and confusion of a child's metaphysic, " I wonder —
what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle's
gone out?" It looks, according to early Buddhism,
exactly like what little Alice and you and I will look
like when our heart has ceased to beat, when the tem-
porary collocation and combination of those Sagkharas,
those Confections, whose union makes our temporary
individuality, shall have been dissolved ; when our life
has closed for ever, and our opportunities of personal

102 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KAEMA.

culture and happiness, our opportunities of kindness
and of love, our opportunities of public service, our
opportunities of service to the generations yet unborn,
shall have passed away, never to revive in any different
world !

This is in instructive contrast to the teachings of
the theologies which hold out the hope, or state as a
matter of fact, that a life of goodness or of right faith
here on earth will render possible the inheritance of an
immortality of heavenly bliss ; and which then, logic-
ally enough, insist, in the way of consolation and
support, upon the utter shortness of the struggle as
compared with the unspeakable infinity of the bliss
beyond. In Buddhism, however exalted the virtue,
however clear the insight, however humble the faith,
there is no Arahatship if the mind be still darkened
by any hankering after any kind of future life.

This is clear from the passage just read from the
Book of the Great Decease, and also from the descrip-
tion, quoted above in the first Lecture, of the virtue of
the Arahat as Aparamattho, "untarnished;" that is,
untarnished by faith in the efiicacy of ritual or by
desire for future life.^ We cannot be surprised to find,

1 Book of the Great Decease, i. 11, ii. 9, and frequently elsewhere.
See above, p. 29, where the context is quoted.

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 103

therefore, that this desire for a future life constitutes,
two, out of a, total of ten^ Saijyojanas, or ''fetters,"
of the mind, to have broken loose from which consti-
tutes the "noble salvation of freedom" reached, in this
life, in Arahatship. So the Cetokhila Sutta calls the
entertainment of this desire after future life " spiritual
"bondage," and adds,

"Whatsoever brother, 0 Bhikkhus, may have left
" the world to enter the Order in the aspiration of be-
" longing to some one or other of the angel hosts, think-
'' ing to himself, ' By this morality, by this observance,
"'by this austerity, or by this earnestness of life,
" ' may I become an angel, or one of the angels !' his
" mind inclineth not to zeal, exertion, perseverance and
" struggle. But whosever mind inclineth not to zeal,
" exertion, perseverance and struggle, he has not broken

"through this Fifth Spiritual Bondage And

"whatsoever brother, 0 Bhikkhus, has not become
" quite free from the five kinds of spiritual barrenness,
"has not altogether broken through the five kinds of
"mental bondage — that such an one should reach up
" to the full advantage of, should attain to full growth
" in this doctrine and discipline — that can in no wise
"be!"i

So that not only is the Arahat to look for no reward,
no happiness, which he himself is to be conscious of

1 Eh. D., Buddhist Suttas from the Pali, pp. 227, 228,
where the context may be seen.

104 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARITA.

hereafter, but the nourishing of any hope of a future
life is really even worse than unfounded ; it is declared
to be an actual impediment in the way of the only
object that we ought to seek after, viz. the attainment
in this world of the state of mental and ethical culture
summed up in the word Arahatship.

It is easy to understand that this adaptation and
modification of the previously existing doctrine of the
transmigration of souls had little chance of being re-
ooived with enthusiasm, or even approval, among a
populace accustomed to Animistic ideas much more
congenial to the natural man. They preferred to look
for a better world beyond, which the ritualisms would
ensure to them, and to which the theologies could guide
them. l^Tow early Buddhism had its answer also to
them, and it was this : Very good ; you want to go to
heaven. It is really a mistake. Arahatship is better
than heaven, and the Arahats are above all gods. But
still, if you cannot comprehend that, then at least under-
stand that the only way to heaven is — not ritual, but
— righteousness.

There is very clear distinction drawn by some Chris-
tian teachers between the goodness of a converted
Christian and the mere natural goodness of a moral
man. A similar distinction runs all through the early

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KAK5IA. 105

Buddhist teachings between the intelligent goodness
of those who have entered the Excellent Way, and the
lower kind of goodness attainable by ordinary men. It
is this lower kind of goodness which leads to re-birth in
blissful states. And though the new being, according to
the doctrine of the creative force of Craving Desire and
of the transfer of Karma, will not be consciously
the same as the man who dies, it will be, according to
Buddhism, really the same, for it will inherit the same
Karma.

To the unconverted good man, then, the hope of a
temporary life in heaven is as really held out in Bud-
dhism as the hope of an eternal life in heaven is held
out to the converted good man in Christianity. And
in the same way the fear of purgatorj^, of a temporary
fall into hell, is used as an argument in Buddhism to
deter ordinary men from evil, just as the fear of pur-
gatory is made use of among the Catholics, and the
fear of hell among both Catholics and evancjelical
Protestants.

It is very curious to notice that re-birth as an animal,
which is of course possible according to the Buddhist
theory, is scarcely ever referred to in this connection.
"We constantly find re-birth in general referred to as
an evil, heaven and purgatory spoken of as the places to
which the good and the evil respectively go, or life in

106 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

the next world, the other world, represented as follow-
ing, for all persons not Arahats, after life in this.

So in the Book of the Great Decease, Gotama is
represented, when giving milk to babes, to have said
that "the "svrong-doer .... on the dissolution of the
" body, after death, is re-born into some unhappy state
"of suffering and woe." While "the well-doer, on
"the dissolution of the body, after death, is re-bom
"into some happy state in heaven."^ Other similar
passages are as follows :

" There also do his good works receive him who has
" done good, and has gone from this world to the
" other — as kinsmen receive a favourite on his return.^

"When a man becomes fat and a great eater, a
"sluggard, rolling this way and that as he lies, like a
"great hog fed on offerings to the gods — again and
" again does that fool enter the womb."^

"Him indeed I call a Brahmana who knows his
"former abodes, who sees through heaven and hell,
"who has reached the end of births."*

" He having mounted the Devayana (the vehicle of
"the gods, exactly as in the TJpanishads) and entered

1 EL D., Buddhist Suttas, &c., pp. 16, 17.

2 Dhammapadai), verse 220.
2 Ibid, verse 325.

* Sutta Nipata, verse 647, repeated in Dhammapadarj, verse
i'2'6.

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KAKJIA. 107

"the high road that is free from dust, having aban-
'' doned sensual desires, went to the Brahma world. "^

" Those beings who are possessed of form, and those
'' who dwell in the formless worlds (that is, the highest
"heavens), have to go to re-birth, for they know not
"Arahatship.

" But those who, having seen through all forms, who
"are made free in Arahatship, such beings leave death
"behind."2

The one connection in which re-birth as an animal
is incidentally referred to, is when speaking of a Sot a-
panno, an Ariya-savako, who has entered the Koble
Path, but has stopped short in his journey along it.
He is represented to be "free from re-birth" in five
kinds of various unhappy states (the panca-gatiyo),
of which that of being an animal is mentioned as one.^

I trust I shall not be misunderstood. It is a ques-
tion of degree. Re-birth as an animal, that is to say,
the transfer of a man's Karma to an animal, either
immediately or after some intervening stage, is clearly
part of the oldest Buddhist belief. And the authors
of later works rightly take it for granted. In the
Cariya Pitaka, which is even included in the supple-
mentary part of the Pali Pitakas, the Karma of the

^ Sutta Nipata, verse 138.

2 Ibid. 754, 755.

^ See Appendix for the authorities for tliis statement.

108 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA,

future Buddha is represented to have belonged, and
apparently in succession, both to men and to animals.
And certainly the Jataka stories, though only in one
or two isolated instances, speak of the Karma of
a human being being immediately transferred to an
animal.^ But not a single instance has been found
in the older parts of the Pali Pitakas of a man being
re-born as an animal, and, with the single exception
just referred to, the doctrine is not even alluded to.

It is strange that this has never been yet pointed
out, for it seems to me to be of considerable importance
for a right understanding of the early Buddhist belief.
It has been so commonly supposed that the transmi-
gration of the souls of men into animals was one of the
principal, perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic
of Buddhism, that I am afraid I must seem somewhat
of an iconoclast in maintaining, not merely that there
is no transmigration of souls in Gotama's teaching, that
his real theory is a transfer of Karma, but even that
comparatively little stress was originally laid upon the
possibility of this transfer of Karma taking place imme-
diately from a man to an animal.

Yet you will recollect that the Ilpanishads say the
souls of all dead men go to the moon, and thence only
descend on to earth or into animals. In harmony with

^ Sec, for instance, Rh. D., Buddhist Birth Stories, Vol. L
253.

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA, 109

this, the earliest Buddhist doctrine may very well have
been that the Karma of unconverted men would ordi-
narily he carried on by new beings in one of the various
heavens or purgatories, and that only after this inter-
mediate state of existence had come to an end would
their Karma be again carried on by other beings, in-
cluding animals. It is at all events certain that any
such birth in purgatory, or as an animal, was rendered
impossible by the very entrance upon the Path, by the
getting rid of the ''fetter" of the delusions regarding
the persistence of individuality ; while the attainment
of Arahatship in this life at once prevented the Karma
from being carried on by any individual of any kind
whatever.

In no case is there, therefore, any future life in the
Christian sense. At a man's death, nothing survives
but the effect of his actions ; and the good that he has
done, though it lives after him, will redound, not to
his own benefit, as we should call it, but to the benefit
of generations yet unborn, between himself and whom
there will be no consciousness of identity in any shape
or way.

As has been well pointed out by the Eev. Dr. Dods
in his interesting work entitled, Mohammed, Buddha
and Christ, "This is the Buddhist analogue to tho

110 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

" Positivist offset to personal anniliilation so winningly
"presented by George Eliot:

" ' 0 may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence : live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self.
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's search
To vaster issues ....
This is life to come!'"

There is doubtless some analogy between this beau-
tiful sentiment and the Buddhist doctrine. But the
modern poet has her mind directed upon the future,
and the ancient prophet is thinking more especially of
the past. Early Buddhism had no idea, just as early
Christianity had not, of the principle underlying the
foundation of the higher morality of the future, the
duty which we owe, not only to our fellow-men of
to-day, but also to those of the morrow — to the race as
a whole, but in the future even more than now. Bud-
dhists and Christians may both maintain, and rightly
maintain, that the duty of universal love laid down in
their Scriptures can be held to involve and include this
modern conception; but neither the early Buddhists
nor the early Christians looked at the matter quite in

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KAEMA. Ill

this way. The sense of duty to the race has sprung
out of a fact, only lately become a generally received
conception — I mean the progressive continuity of
human progress. And the corresponding doctrine of
Buddhism is not that "the thoughts of men are
"widened with the process of the suns," but that there
are recurring cycles of improvement and decay.

It is true that the Buddhist duty of universal love
is much more far-reaching as regards the present than
the corresponding duty as commonly received in any
other religion. It enfolds in its ample embrace not
only the brethren and sisters of the new faith, not
only our neighbours, but every being that has life.
"As a mother, even at the risk of her own life,
"protects her son, her only son, so let a man cultivate
"goodwill without measure toward all beings.
"Let him cultivate goodwill without measure — unhin-
" dered love and friendliness — toward the whole world,
" above, below, around. Standing, walking, sitting or
"lying, let him be firm in this mind so long as he is
"awake: this state of heart, they say, is the best ip
"the world!"!

But, so far as I know, it never occurred to the Bud-

^ Brahmar) vihiirar) idha, literally "the highest condition."
It is more fully described in the passage quoted at the close of the
last Lecture from the Tevijja Sutta. The verses here quoted are
from the Metta Sutta, which forms part both of the Khuddaka
Patha, and of the Sutta Nipata.

112 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

dhist teachers to inculcate a duty towards tlic beings
that will exist in the ages yet to come. Even such
passages as that from the Sutra of the Forty-two Sec-
tions, '' To give food to such by the thousand myriad is
" not like giving food to one Buddha, and learning to
" pray to him from a desire to save all living creatures,"
have not been found as yet in the older books. The
expression ''pray to him" is certainly impossible Bud-
dhism even at the date of the Siitra of the Forty-two
Articles, and evidently rests on a mistranslation.^

It is interesting to notice, however, how the glamour
of the old Animism still survives both in the Buddhist
doctrine and in George Eliot's poetry. Both hold that
there is not really any "life to come" at all, in the
ordinary Animistic sense; that all that survives is
Karma. But both put the new wine into the old
bottles. Both wrap up the bitter pill of absolute per-
sonal dissolution in the sweetmeat of the old familiar
phrases, for the better presentation of their new truth
to egoistic minds, still hampered by what Gotama's
disciples called the Sakkaya-ditthi, Bhavasava,
the taint, the delusion, of the hankering after a con-
tinuing individuality.

^ It occurs in Mr, Beal's "Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the
Chinese." M. Foucaux, in his "Sutra en 42 Articles" (Paris, 1878,
p. 15), gives an entirely different, and no doubt more accurate ver-
sion, direct from the original Sanskrit. He translates the last
clause, " Cela est ainsi h cause du desir de rechercher, d'apprendro
" a fond la voie du Bouddha, et de procurer le bien de tous les etres."

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 113

And both, I tliink, were a little, just a little, caught
in their own net. Did not the gifted poet see a some-
thing more than poetic play of words in her "life to
" come" ? And certainly, however often " the Master
"with eye divine" reiterated, when speaking of the
Arahat, the praises of individual cessation, both he and
Plato attached to desire, as a real and sober fact, an
influence and a power which has no actual existence.

There is one other comparison which will help us to
understand, not only the Buddhist theory of pre-exist-
ence, but beliefs more familiar to us which have played
a very great part in human affairs. I mean, firstly,
that sense of an overruling and arbitrary Fate so power-
fully represented in the Greek tragedies, and still so
powerful among many peoples (more especially among
Muhammadans) ; and secondly, that doctrine of pre-
destination, of the foreknowledge of God, which has
occupied so large a space in the thoughts of many
Christian men. Each of these theories endeavours to
give a philosophical explanation of an undeniable fact,
the presence within us and about us of an irresistible
power, which cannot be traced, and from which there
is no escape.

The Muhammadan doctrine of fate is not mere
confession of ignorance, mere giving up in despair. It

I

114 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

includes a humble submission, a patient resignation,
which is often the best medicine for the supposed
malady. Predestination is the logical expression, from
the Monotheistic point of view, of the weight of the
universe arrayed against the individual. Pre-existence,
that part of the transmigration of Karma which is
predominantly insisted upon in early Buddhism, is an
ethical meeting of the same difficulty.

The fact underlying all these theories is acknow-
ledged to be a very real one. The history of the indi-
vidual does not begin with his birth. He has been
endless generations in the making. And he cannot
sever himself from his surroundings; no, not for an
hour. The tiny snowdrop droops its fairy head just so
much, and no more, because it is balanced by the uni-
verse. It is a snowdrop, not an oak, and just that
kind of snowdrop, because it is the outcome of the
Karma of an endless series of past existences; and
because it did not begin to be when the flower opened,
or when the mother-plant fii'st peeped above the ground,
or first met the embraces of the sun, or when the bulb
began to shoot beneath the soil, or at any time which
you or I can fix. A great American writer says : "It
'' was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain of Fate, to
"reconcile this despotism of race with liberty, when
^^the Hindoos said, Tate is nothing but the deeds
" ' committed in a prior state of existence.' I find the
"coincidence of Eastern and Western speculation in

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KAI15IA. 115

"the daring statement of the German philosopher
" Schelling, ' There is in every man a certain feeling
'"that he has been, what he is from all eternity.'"
"We may put a new and deeper meaning into the words
of the poet :

.... " Our deeds follow us from afar,
And what we have been makes us what we are."

As in the older teaching, so in modern Buddhism,
it is this pre-existence aspect of the theory which plays
the greatest part and has the greatest vitality. The
modern Buddhist rarely imagines, or is afraid, that
there is any chance of his being re-born as an animal.
He may think of such an event Avitli regard to his
neighbour, or as a joke, but not in a serious, religious
mood as a possible occurrence to himself. The doctrine
of Karma was never intended to be so much an expla-
nation of what would happen to men after death, as an
explanation, di-awn from the past, of what was now
happening to him during life. And so also the belief
in previous existence still presents itself to the Bud-
dhist as a theory which accounts for the present by the
past, and as the foundation of the humorous ethics, the
sly fun, of the Buddhist Birth Stories.

These are still and always have been a very present
reality, a great power, to the vast numbers of the

i2

110 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OP KAEMA.

Buddhists in every land. I recollect, some years ago,
when I was in Ceylon, riding one night along the
beautiful road from Galle to Colombo, one of the most
lovely roads in the world, shaded throughout with the
exquisite roof of the palm-leaves, and bordered on one
side with long stretches of green sward clearly visible
between the branchless stems of the trees, while on the
other side the blue sea beats upon the shore, and bears
with it a fresh and strengthening breeze. The moon
was bright — more full than usual, I suppose, with the
radiance of the departed souls of the good ; — and at a
turn of the road I came suddenly in view of an open
space, visible through the trees on my left, where hun-
dreds of people, dressed in their best and brightest,
were seated on the ground, listening to what appeared
to be a sermon. I rode up, and was surprised to find
them talking and smiling pleasantly to one another.
Tired with my journey, I stopped and listened. What
they were drinking in with such evident delight were
Jataka tales, the Buddhist Birth Stories. This day,
too, we have had a long journey, and we are perhaps
somewhat like Milton's angels who

''reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,
Fixed ftite, free will, foreknowledge absolute.
And found no end in wandering mazes lost."

Will you let us rest ourselves for awhile, while you

TUE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KAKMA. 117

listen to a Jataka story which is very much to the
point ?

" Long ago the Bodisat was bom to a forest life as
*' Genius of a tree standing near a certain lotus pond.

" Now at that time the water used to run short at
"the dry season in a certain pond, not over large, in
"which there were a good many fish. And a crane
" thought, on seeing the fish —

"'I must outwit these fish somehow or other and
" '■ make a prey of them.'

" And he went and sat down at the edge of the
'• water, thinking how he should do it.

""When the fish saw him, they asked him, ' What
" ' are you sitting there for, lost in thought?'

" ' I am sitting thinking about you,' said he.

" ' Oh, sir ! what are you thinking about us?' said
"they.

" 'Why,' he replied, 'there is very little water in
"'this pond, and but little for you to eat; and the
" ' heat is so great ! So I was thinking. What in the
" ' world will these fish do now ?'

" ' Yes, indeed, sir ! what are we to do ?' said they.

" ' If you will only do as I bid you, I will take you
" 'in my beak to a fine large pond, covered with all
" ' the kinds of lotuses, and put you into it,' answered
" the crane.

"'That a crane should take thought for the fishes

118 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OE KAE.:MA.

" ' is a thing unheard of, sir, since the world began.
" ' It's eating us, one after the other, that you're aiming
'''at!'

"'N'ot I! So long as you trust me, I won't eat
" ' you. But if you don't believe me that there is such
" 'a pond, send one of you with me to go and see it.'

" Then they trusted him, and handed over to him
" one of their number — a big fellow, blind of one eye,
" whom they thought sharp enough in any emergency,
" afloat or ashore. -

" Him the crane took with him, let him go in the
"pond, showed him the whole of it, brought him back,
"and let him go again close to the other fish. And
"he told them all the glories of the pond.

"And when they heard what he said, they ex-
" claimed, 'AH right, sir! You may take us with
"'you.'

"Then the crane took the old purblind fish first to
" the bank of the other pond, and alighted in a Yarana-
"tree growing on the bank there. But he threw it
"into a fork of the tree, struck it with his beak and
"killed it, and then ate its flesh, and threw its bones
"away at the foot of the tree. Then he went back
"and called out —

" ' I've thrown that fish in ; let another come !'

"And in that manner he took all the fish, one by
"one, and ate them, till he came back and found no
"more!

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OP KARMA. 119

'' But there was still a crab left behind there ; and
"the crane thought he would eat him too, and called
" out—

"'I say, good crab, I've taken all the fish away, and
" 'put them into a fine large pond. Come along; I'll
'' ' take you too !'

'' ' But how will you take hold of me to carry me
"'along?'

'' ' I'll bite hold of you with my beak.'

" 'You'll let me fall if you carry me like that. I
" ' won't go with you.'

" ' Don't be afraid ! I'll hold you quite tight all
" ' the way.'

" Then said the crab to himself, ' If this fellow once
" ' got hold of fish, he would never let them go in a
" 'pond! !N"ow if he should really put me into the
" ' pond, it would be capital ; but if he doesn't — then
"'I'll cut his throat and kill him I' So he said to
"him—

" ' Look here, friend; you won't be able to hold me
" ' tight enough ; but we crabs have a famous grip.
" ' If you let me catch hold of you round the neck with
" 'my claws, I shall be glad to go with you.'

"And the other did not see that he was trying to
"outwit him, and agreed. So the crab caught hold
" of his neck with his claws as securely as with a pair
" of blacksmith's pincers, and called out, ' Off with
' " you, now !'

i

120 THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA.

'' And the crane took him and showed him the pond,
'' and then turned off towards the Varana-tree.

" 'Uncle !' cried the crab, 'the pond lies that way,
'' ' but you are taking me this way !'

'' ' Oh, that's it, is it !' answered the crane. 'Your
" 'dear little uncle, your very sweet nephew, you call
" ' me ! You mean me to understand, I suppose, that

I am your slave, who has to lift you up and carry
' ' you about with him ! I*^ow cast your eye upon

the heap of fish-bones lying at the root of yonder
"Varana-tree ! Just as I have eaten those fish, every
" ' one of them, just so I will devour you as well !'

"'Ah! those fishes got eaten through their own
"'stupidity,' answered the crab; 'bat I'm not going
" 'to let you eat me. On the contrary, it is t/oii, that
" ' I am going to destroy. For you in your folly haA^e
" 'not seen that I was outwitting you. If we die, we
"'die both together; for I will cut off this head of
" ' yours and cast it to the ground !' And so saying,
"he gave the crane's neck a grip with his claws, as
"with a vice.

" Then, gasping, and with tears trickling from his
" eyes, and trembling with the fear of death, the crane
" beseeched him, saying, ' 0, my Lord ! Indeed I did
" 'not intend to eat you ! Grant me my life !'

"'Well, well! step down into the pond, and put
" ' me in there.'

"And he turned round and stepped down into the

THE BUDDHIST THEORY OF KARMA. 121

"pond, and placed tlie crab on tlie mud at its edge.
"But the crab cut tlu'ough its neck as clean as one
"would cut a lotus-stalk with a hunting-knife, and
"then only entered the water !

" When the Genius who lived in the Yarana-tree saw
"this strange affair, he made the wood resound with
"his plaudits, uttering in a pleasant voice the verse—

" The villain, though exceeding clever,
Shall prosper not by his villany.
He may win indeed, sharp-witted in deceit,
But only as the Crane here from the Crab !"

These things are an allegory. Do to fab u la,
lector carissime, narratur. The shallow pond is
the world ; the fishes are mankind ; the fine large pond
is security, salvation; the crane, Avho has grown up
with the fishes and is nourished by them, is the pre-
valent superstition, the inherited belief; the old pur-
blind fish — he is quite well-meaning and honest — is
the priest ; and the crab, with the tight grasp of truth,
is as the Arahat, the man made free by insight, who
cuts off the head of delusion " as clean as one would
cut a lotus-stalk with a hunting-knife," and then only
enters into the calm waters of security.^

1 On this iuterpretr.tion of the fable, compare Sutta Kipata,
verses 777, 93 G.

LECTURE IV.
BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA.

One of the most valuable results to be gleaned from
a study of Buddhism is a knowledge of the methods
by which the early Buddhists attempted to give ex-
pression to the deep impression of a force of character,
and of a wisdom beyond their ken, produced in their
minds by the striking personality of Gotama.

To understand those methods, and to appreciate the
lessons they convey, we must transport ourselves in
imagination to the fifth century before the birth of
Christ, and keep constantly before our minds the intel-
lectual conditions among which the early Buddhists
moved. Thus only shall we be able to follow the
perfectly natural course of the growth of ideas con-
cerning a perfectly natural man, whom the orthodox
Buddhists came eventually to regard as a being quite
different from ordinary men, and endowed with powers
quite different from theirs.

An attempt has often been made to draw a curious

BUDDHIST LIVES Of THE BtlDDlIA. 123

conclusion from the supposed fact that the date at which
the Buddha flourished coincides pretty nearly with that
of Pythagoras, Confucius and Zoroaster. The conclusion
is, that the rise at the same time, quite independently,
and in such distant lands, of four great religious
thinkers and reformers, can only have been due to a
certain wave of spiritual feeling then passing over the
world. If this is a mere figure of speech, it is not
very happily chosen, for it is both self-contradictory
and misleading. It suggests an occult influence mak-
ing itself felt across the earth, and contradicts the very
hypothesis on which it rests, that the movements were
independent; and it hides from view the probable
explanation of so much of truth as lies behind the
loose statement that these teachers were contempo-
raneous. A more accurate chronology, even when
stated in round numbers, Avould show that Pytha-
goras was a century before Confucius, Confucius a
century before Grotama, and Zoroaster of a date quite
uncertain, but probably older than any of the three.
The kind of electric thrill which our figure sup-
poses must have been of a peculiarly wayward kind.
Starting from Persia, it travels slowly to Greece, rests
there for a time, returns across Persia and Mongolia
(leaving them uninfluenced by its path) till it comes to
China, and then returns, after a lapse of time which
gives but small proof of vitality, to India. But the
figure gives expression, however unsuccessfully, to a

124 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA.

real connection which is no figure of speech, — a con-
nection, not of actual contact by spiritual thrill or
otherwise, but of similarity in origin. The religious
movements, emphasized in these different countries by
the careers of these four reformers, came affcer^ and in
consequence of, a long series of previous movements.
And these previous movements were in fact so similar
that they ran along nearly parallel lines resting on the
common basis of Animistic conceptions. And similar
causes acting in these parallel lines took about, though
by no means exactly, the same time to produce corre-
sponding results.

What that line of developement had been in India,
we have endeavoured in previous Lectures to show.
The rough science and childish philosophy of Animism
had been moulded, in much the same way as it had been
elsewhere, and notably in Greece, into that strange
Pantheism of the Upanishads which, though we may
not agree with it, we must acknowledge to be one of
the most interesting records of honest and fearless
inquiry handed down to us from ancient times. There
were different schools of thought among these Pan-
theistic philosophers, but the various schools were all
patlis to the same city. But it seems as if, in propor-
tion as the philosophers became more thorough-going
in their new conceptions, the theologians and the people
became more superstitious. For the Brahman philoso-
phers, like the French abb^s of the last century, had

BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 125

not the lionesty and the boldness to secede openly
from the accepted belief; and ethics were as yet quite
distinct from religion, which was chiefly concerned
with forms of ritual.^ Outside ritual and philosophy,
the dwellers in the valley of the Ganges had little
mental food. The poetical side of the hymns of the
Yedas had become obscured, the epics and the drama
of later times were as yet unborn, and the charms of
scientific or historical inquiry were quite unknown.

There then appeared the teacher of a new religion,
pre-eminently ethical, anti-ritualistic, and even anti-
philosophical. For though Gotama was highly trained
in the current systems of philosophy, he studied them
only, like Hume, to show their unreliability. And he
taught that dabbling in metaphysics and speculation
was a hindrance, not a help, to that inward growth
which was the only thing he held to be worth striving
for.

The little that can be ascertained of his real life will
be known to any of those present Avho may have read
my manual of "Buddhism." Will they excuse me if
I recapitulate in a few sentences, for those who have
not, the principal facts.

^ Compare what has been well said by Mr. Cust, Linguistic
and Oriental Essays, p. 113.

126 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE EUDDHA.

Gotama was the son of a raja, a kind of petty chief-
tain of the Sakya clan, who were settled some hundred
miles north of the Ganges, on the spurs at the foot of
the Himalaya range. The date of his birth is not
quite certain, as the oldest authority on the point,
the Dipavaijsa, gives two inconsistent accounts of the
period that elapsed between his time and that of
Asoka. But it can be fixed with sufficient accui'acy
at between the middle and the end of the sixth century
B.C., a period during which the conditions of the valley
of the Ganges underwent no material change. He
was married in early youth to his first cousin, the
daughter of the raja over the neighbouring clan of the
Koliyans, whose principal village was only a few miles
from the village of Kapila-vatthu, in which he was
born. We hear nothing more till his twenty-ninth
year, when, after a long spiritual struggle, the causes
and the nature of which we may guess at, but shall
never exactly know, he finally abandoned his home.
After first studying under teachers of repute, from
whom he derived no satisfactory solution of the pro-
blems of life, he devoted himself for six years to the
strictest penance, by which men then thought that
they could obtain the mastery over the gods. Though
his efforts in this direction were such, that we are told
of his fame having spread abroad like the sound of a
great bell hung in the skies, this also led to no lasting
peace. And in his thirty-fifth year he passed through a

BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 127

second great mental crisis, the details of which, as de-
scribed in Buddhist books with all the poetry the Indian
mind was at that time master of, are curiously similar
to those of the temptation in the wilderness. The end
of this struggle was reached when, under the famous
Bo-tree at Buddha Gaya, he attained to that state of
mind which was afterwards called Buddhahood, and
found at last a final solution of all his doubts and all
his difficulties in the power over the human heart of
inward self-culture and of love to all other beings.

After a struggle with the not unnatural hesitation
whether it would be of any use to make these views
known to others, he decided to prockum publicly the
truth he thought he had discovered ; and for forty-five
years he walked from place to place in the valley of the
Ganges publishing the good news, and gathering round
him a small band of earnest and faithful followers, the
earliest members of his afterwards famous Order. At
last, having gained a considerable measure of success,
he died peacefully, in the midst of his disciples, in his
eightieth year, at Kusi-nagara in Vesali, not very far
beyond the Ganges from the scene of his early studies.

Such are the simple facts of the career of the man
whose life has been more momentous in its influence
upon a large proportion of the human race than that of
any other man who has ever lived. But is this the
view of Gotama's life which has been recorded by his
disciples in the Buddhist books themselves ?

128 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA.

The analogy of similar records in the case of other
religious founders, would lead us to expect that the
followers of the great Indian teacher would not be
satisfied by looking upon their master as a mere ordi-
nary man ; and this expectation is abundantly fulfilled.
They endeavoured to give expression to their deep
feelings of homage and of hero-worship, to their deep
sense of inferiority, to the deep impression made upon
them by the personal power of a character quite un-
equalled among all the men they knew or heard of, by
describing the glory and the grandeur of their Buddha
in poetical and figurative language always liable to be
misunderstood, and hardening too soon into erroneous
beliefs.

When we call to mind how great was the similarity
of the outward conditions under which Christianity and
Buddhism arose, how strikingly analogous in many
respects were the mental qualities of the early Chris-
tians to those of the early Buddhists, how closely the
personal feelings of the first Christian disciples to the
Christ resembled those of the first Buddhist disciples
to the Buddha, we are naturally very strongly interested
to learn what was the effect in the case of early Bud-
dhism of causes which must also have operated in the
history of early Christianity. But the value of the
comparison will be lost unless we bear also in mind
the many differences in the two cases, as well as their

BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 129

resemblances. "We must no more expect to find that
the histories of early Buddhist and early Christian
beliefs as to the person of their respective teachers will
be, even in the smallest statement, exactly the same,
than we expect to find that the growth of Pantheism
out of Polytheism, in the valley of the Ganges and on
the shores of the Mediterranean, was in all respects
identical. "We have to deal merely with similarities,
not with identities.

The early Buddhist ideas of the Buddha were chiefly
modified by two ideals dominating the minds of men
in those days, neither of which had any necessary con-
nection with the particular individual whom we know
by the name of Gotama, so that both might have been
equally well applied to any other person in India, if he
had only excited the same feelings. The one ideal was
chiefly due to political experiences, the other to philo-
sophical speculations ; the one was the ideal of a King
of Eighteousness, the other of an all-perfect "Wisdom.

Just at the time when the early Buddhist literature
regarding Gotama was reaching its canonical form, and
the ideas of the Buddhists regarding him were being
developed into what are now the orthodox views, the
ancient political framework of Indian society was un-
dergoing an inevitable and important change. The

K

130 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA,

older division into clans, some of them patriarclial,
some of them aristocratic republics, was passing into
the more modern division into nations. A new power
had arisen, and was making itself very clearly felt —
the power of an autocratic king. At the end of the
fourth century B.C., there had already been dynasties
of kings in the two most powerful countries on the
banks of the Ganges, Kosala and Magadha. And we
then hear of the first great sovereign— that Chandra-
gutta who possibly met with Alexander ; with whom
certainly Alexander's successor, Seleukos Nikator, first
fought and then entered into treaty ; and whose power
extended from the eastern Ganges to beyond the Panjab,
and from the Himalaya mountains down to the Vindhya
range. His victories and his far-reaching dominion
brought home to the people the idea of a universal
monarch.

They combined with this idea a theory, common to all
progressive peoples in ancient times, incorporated into
almost all the ancient religions, and derived from a very
natural dissatisfaction with existing afiairs — that theory
of a golden age which men used to think must certainly
have existed in the past, and which the modern belief,
based on more accurate knowledge, places, with equal
certitude, in the future. The ideal monarch, the
Chakka-vatti, was a king of kings, irresistible and
mighty, who ruled in righteousness over a happy
people. He is often described in the Buddliist Suttas

BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 131

as ''a king of kings, a righteous man wlic ruled in
"righteousness, lord of the four quarters of the earth,
"invincible, the protector of his people, possessor of
"the seven royal treasures." The details of these
royal treasures, and of four wonderful gifts, often asso-
ciated with them as distinguishing marks of a king of
kings, are particularly interesting as being compounded
of the ancient and half-forgotten poetry of the sun-
myth, and of the new and powerful ethics of Buddhism.
Whan the stories told of the old gods, of the external
spirits supposed to animate the powers of nature, and
especially of the sun-god in his battles with the storm,
had become misunderstood, the heroes of these stories
were taken to be men, half human, half divine, and
the glorious attributes ascribed to them were naturally
applied and adapted to the new ideal.

The first of these treasures was the treasure of the
Wheel, with its nave, its tire, and all its thousand
spokes complete, which appears to the great king, when
he has purified himself, and has gone up into the upper
storey of his palace to keep the sacred day. The wheel
is taken from the Vedic poetry, in which the sun had
been described as rolling on in his victorious course
across the space of heaven. And like the sun, when
the wondrous wheel appears to the great king, it
rolls onwards to the very extremities of the world
conquering and to conquer. But the wheel of the
ancient sun-worship is now subordinated to the king

k2

132 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA.

who has purified himself. It only subjugates the
other kings it meets with to subject them to the
righteous monarch, who lays down the sacred Bud-
dhist laws; "Ye shall slay no living thing ! Ye shall
"not take what has not been given! Ye shall
"not act wrongly touching the bodily desires! Ye
"shall speak no lie! Ye shall drink no maddening
" drink !" And in subjugating them, it brings the
conquered ones under no lawless tyranny, for the ideal
king then confirms his willing subjects in all their
ancient privileges and rights.^

Secondly, the king of kings is the possessor of the
wonderful White Elephant, which can carry its
master across the broad earth to its very ocean boun-
dary, and return home again in time for the morning
meal. This is adapted from the mythical elephant
Airavata, " the Fertilizer," on which the sun-god Indra
rides, the personification of the great, white, fertilizing
rain-cloud, so rapid in its passage before the winds of
the monsoon over the vault of heaven.^

Thirdly, the king of kings is the possessor of the
Treasure of the Horse, "all white, with a black
"head and a dark mane, wonderful in power, flying

^ This is the full meaning of the yathabhuttai) bhuiijatha of
the text. Comp. Kh. D,, Buddhist Suttas from the Pali,
p. 253.

2 See Senart, Lege nd o du Bond dha, pp. 25 — 27, and Professor
A. Kulm, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 241.

BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 133

'' through the sky, the charger-king whose name was
"Thunder-Cloud." The description is sufficient evi-
dence of this figure being also derived from the ancient
mythology, and from a part of it which has survived
down to our own times, through the influence of the
Greeks, in the horses of the sun. And it is easy to
understand why the Western nations preserved this
image of the ancient cloud-poetry rather than the last.

Fourthly, the king of kings is the possessor of a
wondrous Gem, called the Yeluriya, from which
our word beryl is probably derived, "bright, of the
" purest species, with eight facets, excellently wrought,
" clear, transparent, perfect in every way."

That the gem was included among the royal treasures
need not surprise us, and would seem to be explicable
without any reference to the Yedic poetry. But when
we find that " the splendour of that wondrous gem
"spread round about a league on every side," and that
"when the great king of glory, to test that wondrous
" gem, set all his four-fold army in array, and raised
" aloft the gem upon his standard-top, he was able to
" march out in the gloom and darkness of the night,
"and all the dwellers round about began their daily
"work, thinking, 'The daylight hath appeared!'" we
see that we have to do with no ordinary jewel. And
when we recollect that the lightning with which Indra,
in the hymns, slays the demon of the darkness, is called
his jewel, and that mystical gems have survived in the

134 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BtJDDIlA.

later popular beliefs as gifted with supernatural powers,
able to carry their happy possessors through the sky,
or obtain for them prosperity and wealth, we see that
here also we have a reminiscence of the poetry and
mysticism of that Animism which is so hard to kill.

Fifthly, the king of kings is the possessor of a
Pearl among Women, "graceful in figure, lovely
"in appearance, charming in manner, and beautiful
"in complexion; surpassing human beauty, she had
" attained unto the beauty of the gods !" The two last
treasures are a Treasurer and an Adviser, faithful
servants, like the Pearl among women, of the king of
kings. These are not apparently or necessarily adopted
from the Vedic hymns, and the descriptions of them
contain no details of peculiar interest : we can there-
fore pass on to the four Iddhis or wonderful gifts with
which he is said to have been endowed.

These are simply such qualities of body and mind as
would naturally be ascribed to the ideal king. He is,
in the first place, "graceful in figure, handsome in
"appearance, and pleasing in manner, beyond what
" other men are." Secondly, he was " of long life, and
" of many years, beyond those of other men." Thirdly,
he was "free from disease, and from bodily suffering,
" beyond what other men are." And fourthly, he was
" beloved and popular with Brahmans and with laymen
('alike." As a father is near and dear to his sons, so
is he said to have been to them; and as sons are near

BUDDKiST LIVES OP THE BUDDHA. 135

and dear to their father, so were they to him. Once, it
is related, he was proceeding in royal pomp to his plea-
sure-ground. The people besought him, saying, '' 0
" king, pass slowly by, that we may look upon thee for
"a longer time!" But he, addressing his charioteer,
replies, " Drive on the chariot slowly, charioteer, that
" I may look upon my people for a longer time !"
Such is the courtesy and such the mutual love which
reigns in the golden age between the monarch and the
people of his realm. Such is the Buddhist picture of
the ideal king.

"We shall be able better to enter into the feelings
which prompted the early Buddhists in their appli-
cation of this ideal to Gotama, if we call to mind the
manner in which the Jewish ideal of a Messiah influ-
enced the minds of the early Christians. The two
ideals are of course not the same in detail, for they
grew out of very different experiences, and were
clothed in words drawn from very different literatures.
But they are so remarkably similar, both in the sources,
political and spiritual, from which they sprung, and in
their most essential features, that the comparison of
the two cannot fail to be historically instructive.

In the first place, just as the Messiah whom the
Hebrews expected was very unlike him to whom the
word was afterwards applied, so the Cakka-vatti was
very unlike what Gotama really was. The ideals existed
before their supposed fulfilment ; and they were only

136 BUDDHIST LIVES OP THE BUDDHA.

fulfilled by being put to a use so unthouglit of by those
who held them, that they really ceased, as ideals, to
exist. The Christian Messiah is as much higher and
more noble than the previous conception of the first-
century Jews, as the Buddhist King of Eighteousness
is higher and more noble than the previous Hindu
conception of the King of Kings.

One may be allowed to say this without being sup-
posed to detract from the great beauty of those earlier
conceptions. We cannot but sympathize with that
natural longing — to which Carlyle gave such varied
and energetic expression — for the great man whose
strong hand shall cut the gordian knot of the compli-
cated difficulties of life, and shall set all things straight.
And when we find that peoples so distant and so dif-
ferent as the Jews and the Indian Aryans, when ima-
gining what kind of man such a man must be, built up
such grand and glorious fancies as those of the Messiah
and the Cakka-vatti, it can only strengthen our faith
in humanity. But it was surely a truer instinct which
guided the early Christians and the early Buddhists,
when the eyes of their minds had been opened by
the new teaching, to put the Teacher in the place of
the King, and to look for the ideal kingdom in a
kingdom of righteousness in the hearts of men. It was
a change greater even, perhaps, than they really saw ;
for it made the motive-power, the strength, the hope
of the new kingdom, to lie in the change of character

BUDDniST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 137

in tlie individuals. It logically replaced the vain
craving after a dens ex machina, in the guise of a
benevolent despot, by the sure and certain hope of a
wise philanthropy in the gradual elevation of mankind.
Eut the Buddhists, at least, had no such foresight
as to draw this logical conclusion ; they had only the
insight to recognize in their Master the true Cakka-
vatti. And when seeking for words and images in
which to express their awe and love to him, they
allowed the ideal of the Cakka-vatti to influence them
in two ways. They used it, in the first place, as a type
to which their descriptions of the Master, as their King
of Eighteousness, should conform. His chief disciple,
Sariputta, became known as the Prime Minister in that
kingdom, and the Arahats were the body-guard of the
king, who gave them the Silas (the lower morality
described in the second Lecture) as a cloak, earnest
meditation as a breastplate, continual mindfulness as a
shield, patience as a staff", the Dhamma or true doctrine
as a sword that overcomes all things incompatible with
the Silas, and the insight of Arahatship as a gem to
adorn their helmet. It was a battle they had to fight,
a victory they had to win, under a Leader who himself
had gone on in front to show the way. The rain-cloud,
which was the appanage of the Cakka-vatti, rained
down in the new teaching the ambrosia (Amata) of
Arahatship, the fertilizer of all right desires, the ex-
tinguisher of the fatal fires of lust, of hatred, and of

138 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA.

ignorance. And the mystic wheel became the wheel
of the Dhamma, which the King of Righteousness him-
self had set rolling onwards in the first discourse he
uttered — that supreme wheel of the empire of truth
which not by any Samana or Brahman, not by any
god, not by any Brahma or Mara, not by any being
in the universe, can ever be turned back. Invincibly
shall it roll onwards to the very boundaries of the
world, until all the kings of the earth shall have
become willing subjects of the mild empire of its lord,
obedient followers of the law of truth !

It is an instructive instance of the way in which
spiritual figures of speech harden and crystallize, in
ignorant minds, into erroneous beliefs and baneful super-
stitions, that this beautiful parable, the only "turning
of the wheel of the Dhamma" which we hear of in early
Buddhism, has given rise to the use of the well-known
praying-wheels — those curious machines which, filled
with endless repetitions of a form of sacred words
(themselves unknown in the earlier teaching), stand in
the towns in every open place, are put up beside the
foot-paths and the roads, and even, by the help of sails
like those of windmills, are turned by every breeze
which blows over the thrice sacred realm of the pope-
king of the valleys of Tibet.

But, secondly — and here the early Buddhists were
not so wise — they allowed their ideal of the Cakka-
vatti to influence their beliefs as to the actual facts of

ilJDDltlST LIVES OF THE UUDDHA. 139

the outward conditions of Gotama's life. The petty-
chief, his father, became a powerful monarch of wide-
spread dominions, though the geographical details of
the legend really show to the slightest criticism how
limited was the extent of the Sakya clan over whom
he held only a modified chieftainship. The modest
dwelling in which Gotama was born becomes a palace.
The literature of somewhat later times provides him on
his marriage with three palaces, one for use in each of
the three seasons of the year. And he is supposed
to have been brought up amidst every dignity and
luxury which the minds of the Buddhist poets can
conceive.

There are unmistakable traces in many of these
details — into which I have no time to enter, and which
vary in every book, growing in magnificence as the
interval of time grows greater — of the ancient glory
of the sun-god. And they also seem to me to aff'ord
undeniable evidence of a desire in the relators of these
legends to express — in the same spirit as has inspired
many Christian writers — the greatness of Gotama's
renunciation. This is the motive which leads them to
raise to the highest pitch the glories of the position he
abandoned, when he is related to have left his father's
throne, to which he, the only son, was heir ; to have
left his young wife and his only child behind him ; to
have left his bright home, with all its glories and
delights, and to have gone out into the darkness of the

140 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA.

uiglit, to become a despised mendicant, and a lonely,
homeless wanderer. The gorgeous descriptions of what
he had resigned are indications, not only of the sources
of Buddhist poetry, but also of the fact that the deepest
impression he made upon his disciples was the lesson
of self-renunciation, that Selbst-todtung, annihilation
of self, which, according to one of our latest prophets,
"is justly reckoned the beginning of all virtue."^

There is a modern poem by an English writer — Mr.
Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia — which has caught
very successfully, as it seems to me, the tone and spirit
of the later forms of this side of the Cakka-vatti
legends, and has given expression in eloquent words to
the thoughts that stirred the hearts of the Buddhists
of those times. And when we call to mind the process
through which it has become possible for a Christian
poet to sing of the carpenter's Son,

" His Father's home of light,
His rainbow-circled throne,
He left for earthly night.
For wanderings sad and lone,"^

we shall be able to read between the lines of these
Buddhist Caldca-vatti legends, and to recognize in them,
not merely empty falsehoods, the offspring of folly or

^ Caiiyle, Jesuitism, p. 257.

* Hymns, Ancient and Modern, 239.

BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 141

of fraud, but the only embodiment possible, under those
conditions, of some of the noblest feelings that have
ever moved the world.

Besides the ideal king, the personification of Power
and Justice, another ideal has played an important part
in the formation of early Buddhist ideas regarding
their Master. This ideal, too, owed its birth at least
to reminiscences of Yedic thought ; but I venture to
think, though the question is as yet beset with diffi-
culties, that it had its principal developement during
the later times in which the Buddhist Suttas were
gradually assuming their present shape. It was the
ideal of a perfectly Wise Man, the personification of
Wisdom, the Buddha.

It had been held by the pre-Buddhistic Aryans in
India that holy men, by properly performed ritual, by
suitable sacrifice, could, in fact, compel the gods to
yield to their irresistible influence ; and that a life of
self-denial and penance, joined with mysterious wisdom,
would give to men superhuman power. The belief in
transmigration, that the efficacy of deeds done in one
life would be carried over to the next, gave to this idea
additional force ; while among the early Buddhists it
received further confirmation from the supreme impor-

142 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BTJDDltA.

tance attached by Gotama to self-reimnciatioiij to intel-
lectual self- culture, and. to wisdom.

There thus sprung up this ideal of the Buddha, the
man who, through countless ages of heroic struggle
in many different births, had at last attained to such
perfect purity and perfect wisdom, that he was able,
when goodness was dying out on earth, and men had
become more and more wicked and depraved, to extin-
guish by his teaching the fires of their passion, to lead
them along the way of escape from the net of transmi-
gration, and thus in that evil time to save a lost world
from impending ruin.

It was perhaps the memory of the great sages of old,
the Eishis of the older teaching, that led the early
Buddhists, if not Gotama himself, to believe that there
had been previous Buddhas before Gotama. At first
this belief was perhaps confined to the seven Buddhas
(seven, that is, including Gotama himself), of whom
separate mention is made in several of the Suttas. But
ah'eady in some of the latest books included in the Pali
Pitakas we hear of twenty-seven Buddhas, and in later
times the number of these previous Buddhas was be-
lieved to be innumerable. And in the latest phases of
the doctrine, as held in Nepal and in Tibet, this world
was held to have come into being through a series or
chain of emanations, in which these previois Bud-
dhas form the connecting links.

There is a great deal in these later emanations which

BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BrDDHA. 143

remind us of the Emanations of the Gnostic Christians ;
and the ideal of the Buddha has, even in early Bud-
dhism, an influence similar, in many respects, to that
of the Logos in early Christianity. But the divine
element in the Gnostic theory distinguishes it from the
Buddhist ideal Wisdom, just as the divine and solar
elements in the Buddhist ideal king distinguish him
from the ideal Messiah of the later pre-Christian Jews.
It was Gotama himself, in all probahility, who gave
the start to this latter phase of the new Buddhist con-
ceptions, by his own belief, as recorded in the Suttas,
that he was himself a Buddha. It is true that the writ-
ings of the early Buddhists are open to most suspicion
precisely where they speak of the person of the Buddha.
The doctrines of BudcUiism are so original, and so far
beyond the capacity of the early Buddhists, it is so
very probable that before the end of his long career
Gotama himself had completely worked out and enun-
ciated them, that we may rely with less doubt upon
the records of the Buddhist ethical system, than upon
what the early Buddliists, profoundly influenced by the
feelings to which reference has just been made, have
said about their revered Master himself. But the
belief in his own Buddhahood is placed, in the very
oldest parts of the Pitakas, so often in Gotama's mouth,
and at such important crises in his career, that it is
hard not to believe that the tradition is, in this respect,
correct. And it receives also what seems to me to be

144 BUDDHIST LIVES OP THE BUDDHA.

a very real support from the unquestioned facts that
other teachers under similar conditions have held simi-
lar beliefs regarding themselves.

Thus, after the close of that greatest of all events in
his life, his long struggle and final victory over Mara,
the Evil One, in the jungle, and the subsequent long
fast of four times seven days, Gotama is said to have
announced his Buddhahood to the first person whom he
meets. He was then on his way to Benares to publish
the good news of the truth he had just found to his five
friends, the Pancavaggiya ascetics. The account in the
Pali Introduction to the Book of Buddhist Birth Stories
goes on :

"The five ascetics, seeing already from afar the
" Buddha coming, said one to another, 'Friend! hero
'''comes the Samana Gotama. He has turned aside
" ' again to the free use of the necessaries of life, and
" ' has recovered roundness of form, acuteness of sense,
" ' and beauty of complexion. We ought to pay him
"'no reverence; but as he is, after all, of a good
"'family, he deserves the honour of a seat. So we
" ' will simply prepare a seat for him.'

" Then the Blessed One, casting about in his mind
"{by the power that he had of knowing what was
"going on in the thoughts of all beings) as to what
" they were thinking of, knew their thoughts. And
'■' concentrating that feeling of his love which was able
"to pervade generally all beings in earth and heaven,

BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 145

"he directed it specially towards them. So the sense
" of his love diffused itself through their hearts. And
" as he came nearer and nearer, unable any longer to
"adhere to their resolve, they arose from their seats,
" and bowed down before him, and welcomed him with
"every demonstration of respect. But not knowing
" that he had become a Buddha, they addressed him,
"in everything they said, either by name or as 'Good
" ' friend !' Then the Blessed One announced to them
" his Buddhahood, saying: '0 Samanas, address not
" ' a Buddha by his name or as Good friend ! And I,
" ' 0 Samanas, am become a Buddha, as those who
" ' have gone before !' " ^

The expression used here in the oldest account of
this meeting known to me (that in the first Khandhaka)^
is Arahag Samma-sambuddho, words very fami-
liar to all who read native Buddhist books, as they are
repeated on the opening page of each treatise. They
seem to me to be perfectly simple in meaning, and not
to hide any mystery at all. Arahaij is an Arahat,
one who has reached the end of Gotama's so-called
Noble Path, and is free from the fatal dispositions of
mind to sensuality, individuality, delusion and igno-
rance. Samma is perfect, complete in all its parts;
and Sambuddha is merely, as we should say, "a
" very Buddha."

1 Buddhist Birth Stories, p. 112.
* Mahavagga, i. 6, 12.

L

146 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE EUDDHA.

There were, namely, two kinds of Bucldhas or men
of insight ; firstly, those who have seen through things,
and being free from delusions (more especially the
delusions of Animistic views on the one hand, and of
worldliness on the other) are completely, so to speak,
out of the jungle, and in the open. But they cannot
trace back the several parts of the path by which they
have themselves escaped, so as to be able to guide
others along it. They are Pacceka-Buddhas, that
is, ''enlightened only for one." Quite emancipated
themselves, they are like a revelation in some unknown
tongue, from which others can receive no immediate
deliverance; or, to take a modern instance, like one
who holds perfectly sound views of science or of his-
tory, and never therefore talks heresy, but through
want of enthusiasm, absence of the power of exposition,
moral timidity, or fear of being detected in a fault,
observes so discreet a silence that his knowledge dies
with him. Only at rare intervals, once and again in
hundreds of ages, does "a very Buddha," one who has
the insight and can also make others see, appear in the
world, and happy are they who meet him. As was
said in the passage I read last Tuesday week from the
Tevijja Sutta, he not only himself " understands and
"sees as it were face to face," but "he makes his
"knowledge known to others. He proclaims the
"Dhamma, the Truth, both in its letter and in its
"spirit; he makes known the higher life in all its
" purity and in all its perfectness."

.BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA. 147

All this is of peculiar interest from the comparative
point of view. It is an expression from the Buddhist
standpoint, which excludes the theory of a Supreme
Deity, of an idea very similar to that which is expressed
in Christian writings when Christ is represented as the
manifestation of God to men, the Logos, the Word of
God made flesh, the Bread of Life. And it is not a
mere chance that heterodox followers of the two reli-
gions have afterwards used the Buddha and the Logos
conceptions as bases of their emanation theories. It is
only a fresh instance of the way in which similar ideas
in similarly constituted minds come to be modified in
very similar ways.

The Cakka-vatti Buddha was to the early Buddhists
what the Messiah Logos was to the early Christians.
In both cases the two ideas overlap one another, run
into one another, supplement one another. In both
cases the two combined cover as nearly the same ground
as the different foundations of the two teachings will
permit. And it is the Cakka-vatti Buddha circle of
ideas in the one case, just as the Messiah Logos in the
other, that has had the principal influence in determin-
ing the opinions of the early disciples as to the person
of their Master. The method followed in the early
Buddhist and early Christian biographies of their
respective Masters was the same, and led to si^iiilar
results ; though the details are in no particular quite
identical in the two cases.

l2

148 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA.

Before venturing to suggest what seems to me to
be the only obvious conclusion to be drawn from this
parallel, I would add that besides these two ideals of
Power and Wisdom, the reverse of discreditable to
those who formed and held them, other influences
were by no means without weight in the formation of
the Buddhist lives of Gotama. It is a universal
tendency, exemplified not only in ancient lives of
popular saints and of popular heroes, but in modern
every-day life, to discover in the childhood of men
who have afterwards become eminent or famous, clear
prognostications of their future greatness. As these
discoveries are made after the event, they are often
apposite enough; and in the case of the King of
Eighteousness, they took the shape that he descended
of his own accord into his mother's womb from his
throne in heaven ; that at his birth heaven and earth
united to pay him homage ; while the angels sang their
songs of victory, and archangels were present with their
help. His mother was the best and purest of the
daughters of men, and had no other son ; and his con-
ception took place without the aid of his father. His
mother has dreams of his future greatness ; and there
are prophecies at his birth that her son will become
either a Cakka-vatti or a Buddha, who will remove
the veils of ignorance and sin from the world. In his
youth he excels all his companions, and even teaches

BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE EUDBIIA. " 149

the teachers who were appointed to instruct him;
while aged saints unite to pay him honour, and sing
hymns to his praise.

All these details were doubtless purely imaginary.
But they were not due to one mind ; they were the work
of time, and no one who bore a part in their creation
was consciously manufacturing untruth. The early bio-
graphers did not sufficiently distinguish between what
they thought ought to have happened and what did
really happen, between that which seemed edifying to
them and that which was true in fact. But I cannot
believe that they ever set to work deliberately to
forge any part of their narrative.

And this brings us to a fourth cause to which much
that is legendary is due. Their natural belief that the
miraculous was probable, their abiding faith in the
constant presence of supernatural beings, in the con-
stant action of supernatural causes, led the early Bud-
dhists easily to see what they so fully expected to
find. The struggles of Gotama's mind become the
temptations of Mara, the spirit of Evil ; his moments
of exaltation are ascribed to the visits of angels ; his
thoughts of resolution or of triumph become songs in
angel mouths; and a few circumstances, explicable
even now as natural, are related as miraculous events.

A few details, but these are later, are due to yet
another cause. There were local relics to be sancti-
fied, local legends to receive authority from the sacred

150 BUDDHIST LIVES OP THE BUDDHA.

story. The Ceylonese claim to possess one of Gotama's
teeth and the hones of his neck. They consequently
believe and relate an episode in his life explaining
how these relics were obtained.^ The Burmese have
another tooth and another strange story to support it.^
But none of these stories are to be found in the Pitaka
account of the Buddha's death, which is indeed incon-
sistent with them all.^ And in a similar way stories
not found in the earliest authorities occur in the later
books, according to ivhich images then existing had
been actually made in the very lifetime of the Teacher.^
Finally, when all the incredible details due to the
different causes just referred to have been deducted,
there remain a certain number of miraculous incidents
which are apparently due to the mere love of the
marvellous, the origin of which cannot at present be
ascribed to any more definite source than the depraved
and weak imagination of the narrators, who did not
perceive that these stories, so far from heightening,
really veiled and lowered their idea of Gotama, and
were irreconcilable with the real facts of his life.

^ Datliavaijsa, ii. 51, 52.

2 Bigandet, Legend of the Burmese Buddha, p. 343.

3 Maha-parinibbana Sutta, vi. 35 — 62.

* Kijppen, Geschichte dcs Buddhismus, i. 99, ii. 63, 102.

BUDDHIST LIVES OP THE BUDDHA. 161

There now arises the very natural question, whether
all this is any proof that the Christian writers, who
lived about five hundred years after the Buddhist
writers, borrowed their ideas from India ? The resem-
blances are so very striking, that this question has often
been unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative ; but
more often, I thinlv, in popular lectures and in maga-
zine articles than in independent books, and more often
by those who are glad to throw discredit on Christian-
ity than by serious scholars. The fullest treatment of
it from this last point of view is, however, in a very
learned work by a writer of thoroughly earnest and
unbiassed mind, I mean the Angel Messiah of Bud-
dhists, Essenes and Christians, by Mr. Ernest de
Bunsen. The curious reader will find in this volume
a very exhaustive statement of all the possible channels
through which such a borrowing by the Christians
from the Buddhists can be supposed to have taken
place. There is neither time nor space at the close of
this Lecture to enter upon the long and varied argu-
ment which is there set forth. I will only say that I
have carefully considered it throughout with a mind
quite open to conviction, and that I can find no evi-
dence whatever of any actual and direct communication
of any of these ideas from the East to the "West.
Where the Gospel narratives resemble the Buddhist
ones, they seem to me to have been independently

152 BUDDHIST LIVES OF THE BUDDHA.

developed on the shores of the Mediterranean and in
the valley of the Ganges; and strikingly similar as
they often are at first sight, the slightest comparison
is sufficient to show that they rested throughout on a
basis of doctrine fundamentally opposed.

If this view be correct, it remains therefore that the
similarities of idea are evidence not of any borrowing
from the one side or the other, but of similar feelings
engendered in men's minds by similar experiences ; an
explanation which fully accounts not only for all the
similarities, but also for all the differences. And when
it is considered that only twice in the history of the
world have all the circumstances combined to render
the origin of such ideas possible, it must be acknow-
ledged that the lessons drawn from the study of early
Euddhism may be found as useful for the true appre-
ciation of early Christianity as the Vedas are useful
for the true appreciation of classical mythology. Or,
in other words, that those who are willing to discuss
both religions on the same principles may expect to
find, in the history of early Buddhism, not only an
historical example by which they may test their
methods of investigation, but an historical parallel
from which they may condescend to learn.

LECTUEE V.
GOTAMA'S OEDER.

Among the points of Buddhist history most instruc-
tive from a comparative point of view, there is probably
none more important than the fate of Gotama's Saij gha,
the Community or Society of those who had given up
the world to carry out the new ideas. For, as in the
case of his ethical system, so also in the practical
organization of this body of his more earnest and
devoted adherents, he made use of already existing
ideas and customs.

The valley of the Ganges in the sixth century before
the Christian era was a land which did not contain
a single book or a single church. There were no
preachers in it, no editors, nothing like what we
should call a university. There were the Brahman
schools of ritual; and, as part of the ritual was the
repetition of sacred words, grammar and recitation
were taught there as accessories to correct learning by

154 gotama's order.

heart and accurate repetition. And in these schools
codes of ancient customs were handed down by word
of mouth.

But those who had some thoughts of their own to
propound, something to say apart from tradition, were
in the habit of gathering disciples round them in the
same way as Avas done in Greece by the philosophers,
at a time when things had there reached a corre-
sponding point in the parallel developements of these
two communities. There seem to have been not a few
of such self-elected teachers. They led for the most
part very simple lives ; depending for their subsistence
on the voluntary offerings of the multitude (always
ready and even eager to worship). And while there
was no little sophistry, and a good deal of jugglery,
mental and manual, practised among them, there were
also in their ranks not a few really earnest and by no
means altogether unsuccessful inquirers. It is worth
notice in passing that several of these sophists were
women (though there are traces of the disfavour with
which the severer spirits, even in far-ofi times, looked
upon that phase of the movement), and that the majority
of them belonged to one or other of the lower castes.
They had of course not the faintest suspicion of sci-
entific or historical methods of inquiry. They fully
believed they could stretch straight out and grasp the
ultimate truth, like children reaching forth to seize
the moon — a hope that has not yet faded away, as we

GOTAMA^S OEDETv. 155

see from the case of those among us now wlio argue,
as it were, from their own hearth-rugs upwards. And
being unacquainted with any language save their own,
conclusions about words seemed to them as real as
conclusions about things. It was no unusual thing for
them to wander from place to place ready to maintain
theses against all the world. And there was great
public interest in such tournaments, which it was the
custom to terminate by the vanquished acknowledging
the victor as his master, and entering the ranks of his
disciples.

We have grown out of such things since the days of
Luther; and the confusion of tongues has helped us
to understand that we cannot build a tower up to
heaven by laying words on words. We have some-
thing of the insight of humility ; and, aiming not so
high, are beginning to make a surer progress by steps
that can never be thrown doTVTi. Gotama went as far
as was possible in those times in the same direction.
He looked at all the systems as Hume looked at the
philosophies ; and the Buddhist Suttas seem never tired
of representing him as inveighing against ditthi,
literally Yiew, and its " viewy " or *' crotchety "
professors.

But the real analogue to Gotama, as we should
naturally expect, is a man of very different character
from David Hume, and of much less modern mind.
In his place in history, in his methods of exposition,

156 gotama's order.

in many of his personal qualities, Gotama stands side
by side with Socrates : and it is strange that the com-
parison has never been thus pointed out before. But
in one most important particular he was much more
than Socrates. He had a completely elaborated scheme
of practical life, a carefully thought-out system of
inward self- culture, to put in the place of the systems
of philosophy on the one hand, and those of ritual on
the other. It was the desire to carry out this system
into practice that led to the establishment of his Society,
and that imposed upon it its peculiar character.

It was at first, no doubt, simply a body of disci23les.
Like the other teachers, Gotama and his followers
lived on alms; like them, they adopted a peculiar dress;
like them, they sought for converts ; and, as in other
such bodies, their numbers were constantly changing,
individuals joining or leaving the general body as they
felt disposed. A slight difference brought about the first
important change. In the case of other teachers, the dis-
ciples were dependent on the presence of the Master ;
and there being no appeal to the masses, the number of
disciples was kept within moderate limits. The success
of Buddhism in its earliest years has doubtless been
somewhat exaggerated in the Pali Suttas. But when
we recollect that Gotama's system of self -training was
one which all wore invited to adopt, and which could
be carried out irrespective of residence at any particular
spot or in any particular company, we can easily

gotama's order. 157

understand how it c.imc to pass that the disciples were
not confined only to those who could remain with the
Master. Either daring his visits, or at other times,
these isolated followers would receive fresh adherents ;
and it was in consequence of the number of such
accessions, according to the Khandakas, that permission
came to be granted to Gotama's disciples to receive
fresh disciples into the Society without consulting or
referring the matter to him. From that moment the
existence of the Society was assured, even after its
founder had passed away. The body of personal fol-
lowers had become an Order — the oldest, as it is the
most numerous and the most influential, of all the
numerous Orders of religious brethren which the
world has seen.

In order at all to understand either Buddhism itself
or the significance of the history of Buddhism, we must
endeavour, however difficult the task may be, to enter
into the feelings of those who were induced thus to
give up everything in order to devote themselves to a
mode of life which Englishmen as a rule regard with
something approaching very nearly to contempt. I
would not quarrel with that feeling. What we shall
have to set forth in this Lecture will show, indeed,
how great is its excuse, or perhaps even its justifica-
tion ; and it no doubt depends in reality upon what is
the surest basis for correct judgment on such questions,
upon the lessons of history. I would only protest

158 gotama's oeder.

against what seems to me to be the abuse of it — a
closing of one's eyes to what can be said on the other
side, the attaching of an exaggerated imj)ortance to
those things which the recluse, perhaps rightly, looks
down upon as worse than worthless.

In Gotama's time the experiment had not as yet been
fully tried, and we can scarcely wonder that its dangers
had not been foreseen. There is a dissatisfaction
attached to the pursuit of wealth, there is an unreality
in social success, there are sorrows inseparably involved
in family life, that must strike the most careless ob-
server, and that soon impress themselves upon those
who do not observe, but only experience. There are
problems in life that bafEe the acutest inquiry; and
when the turn of afthirs has brought these problems to
the front, without offering any other solution, it is not
unnatural to men to suppose that at least an escape
from them can be found in the quiet life of the cloister,
where peace and calmness reign.

It is this longing after peace that gives us the clue
to the strange fact that hundreds and thousands, in
Buddhist and in Christian countries, have given up all
things else that men live and long for, counting them
but as dross. So we are told in the Ivhandhakas that
when the people were astonished that the great and
famous Brahman, Kassapa of XJruvela, had left all to
join the new Teacher, and the latter asks him to
explain it, saying :

gotama's order. 159

" What liast thou seen, 0 thou of Uruvela,
That thou, for penances so far renowned,
Forsakest thus thy sacrificial fire ?
I ask thee, Kassapa, the meaning of this thing :
How comes it that thine altar lies deserted ?"

He answers :

" 'Tis of such things as sights, and sounds, and tastes,
Of women, and of lusts, the ritual speaks.
When these I saw to be the dregs of life,
I felt no charm in offerings small or great."

Gotama rejoins :

" But if thy mind no longer finds delight
In sights and sounds, and things that please the

taste.
What is it, in the world of men or gods.
That thy heart longs for ? Tell me that, Kassapa !"

And the convert answers :

"That state of Peace I saw, wherein the roots
Of new existences are all destroyed ; and greed.
And hatred, and delusion, all have ceased, —
The state from lust of future life set free ;
That changeth not, can ne'er be led to change.
My mind saw that ! What care I for those rites ?" ^

It is this same longing for peace which is represented

^ The first Kliandhaka, chap. xxii. § 5. Compare Buddhist
Birth Stories, pp. 114, 115.

I GO gotama's oeder.

to have been the deciding motive which led Gotama
himself to abandon the world. The last authority
quoted says of him also :

" The Bodisat, riding in his splendid chariot, entered
"the town with great magnificence and exceeding
" glory. At that time a noble virgin, Kisa GotamI by
'' name, had gone to the flat roof of the upper storey of
"her palace, and she beheld the beauty and majesty
" of the Bodisat as he was proceeding through the city.
"Pleased and delighted at the sight, she burst forth
^' into this song of joy :

" Blessed indeed is that mother, —
Blessed indeed is that father, —
Blessed indeed is that wife, — •
Who owns this Lord so glorious !

"Hearing this, the Bodisat thought to himself, 'On
" ' catching sight of such a one the heart of his mother
"'is made happy, the heart of his father is made
" ' happy, the heart of his wife is made happy ! This
" ' is all she says. But by what can every heart attain
" ' to lasting happiness and peace ?' And to him whose
" mind was estranged from sin the answer came, ' When
" 'the fire of lust is gone out, then peace is gained;
" ' when the fires of hatred and delusion are gone out,
" ' then peace is gained ; when the troubles of mind,
" ' arising from pride, credulity, and all other sins, have
" ' ceased, then peace is gained ! Sweet is the lesson

gotama's order. IGl

^' ' this singer makes me hear, for the Nirvana of Peace
'"is that which I have been trying to find out. This
" 'very day I will break away from household cares !
" ' I will renounce the world ! I will follow only after
'"the Nirvana itself!'"!

This immortal peace, this unchangeable state, to be
reached here on this earth, this Nirvana of Arahatship,
was looked upon by the early Buddhists as better than
all else that the world could bestow. It is the highest
happiness, the bliss that passeth not away, in which
even death hath lost its sting and the grave its victory,
and all the difficulties and trials of life, its gains and
ills, its hopes and its despair, have passed away for
ever in a perfect Eest.

Frederick William Eobertson's words will help us
to understand this position, when he says, without a
thought of Buddhism, "The deepest want of man is

1 Buddhist Birth Stories, pp. 79, 80. The force of this
passage is due to the fulness of meaning which, to the Buddhist,
the words ISTibhuta and Nibbanai) convey. No words in Western
languages cover exactly the same ground, or connote the same ideas.
To explain them fully to any one mifamiliar with Indian modes of
thought would be difficult anywhere, and impossible in a note ; but
their meaning is pretty clear from the above sentences. Where in
them, in the song, the words blessed, happy, peace, and the
words gone out, ceased, occur, Nibbuta stands in the original in
one or other of its two meanings ; where in them the words Nir-
vana, Nirvana of Peace, occur, Nibbanai) stands in the original.
Nirvana is a lasting state of happiness and peace, to be readied
here on earth by the extinction of the "fires" and "troubles" men-
tioned in this passage.

M

1G2 gotama's oeder.

'' not a desire for happiness, but a craving for peace.
''The real strength and majesty of the soul of man is
"calmness, the manifestation of strength, the peace of
" God ruling, the word of Christ saying to the inward
"spirit, 'Peace,' and there is a great calm." And
again : " Peace, then, is the opposite of passion ; and of
"labour, toil and trouble .... that state in which
"there are no desires — in which there is no misery, no
"remorse, no sting. And to this, says the Apostle, ye
"are called — the grand peculiar call of Christianity—
"the call, 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are
" 'heavy laden, and I will give you — Eest.'"

It was the distinguishing characteristic of Gotama,
as the Buddha, that particular quality which made him
to be a "very Buddha," that he had not only found this
Eest for himself, but that he called others to partake
of it ; that he had the power to lead others to under-
stand it, desire it, realize it. And though the state
is a mental state, independent of outward conditions,
though Niiwana might be reached by those who had
not abandoned the world, the Suttas of the early Bud-
dhists are filled with the belief, doubtless shared, if not
originated, by Gotama himself, that the attainment of
it amidst the distractions of business or of family life
was difficult in the extreme.

A very suggestive writer, full of the most modern
spirit, speaks quite seriously of that "calmness and
"serenity of soul which is unattainable by those

gotama's OEDER. IGo

"who still breathe the atmosphere of the domestic
"hearth, and are liable to be swayed and perturbed by
" the emotions inseparable from the love of the earthly,
"the perishable, and the imperfect."^ So we heard
in the Tevijja Sutta the other day how, when he has
listened to the words of the Buddha, the convert thinks :
" Full of hindrances is household life, a path defiled
" by passion : free as the air is the life of him who has
" renounced all worldly things. How difficult is it for
"the man who dwells at home to live the higher life
"in all its fulness, in all its purity, in all its bright
"perfection!"

And numberless other passages might be quoted
from the Suttas in which the same idea is implied,
though the opposition of the two conditions is not often
so directly stated.

Thus, when we read : " The life which brings about
" gain is one thing, but another is the life that leads
" to Nirvana. When the Bhikkhu, the disciple of the
"Master, has perceived this, let him not take delight
" in honour in the world, but let him seek rather after
"separation from it:"^ — we feel that the "separation
"from it" means being so not only in mind, but also
in actual life.

And again : "A wise man should leave the doctrine
" of darkness, and follow the doctrine of light. Going

^ Greg, Enigmas of Life, p. 153.
2 Dhaniraapadai), verse 75.

m2

164 gotama's order.

''forth from his home into the homeless state, let
''him, in retirement, seek there for joy where joy
"seems difficult. Leaving all pleasures behind, and
" free from hindrances, let the wise man purify himself
''from all evil states of mind.''^

In these verses the condemnation is clear, not only
of the state of a man who is too much immersed in
worldly cares, but also of the state of a man who is at
all exposed to their distracting influence.

Here is another such passage :

" Let us live happily then, free from hatred among
"the hating. Among men who hate, let us dwell
"free from hatred !

" Let us live happily then, free from ailments among
" the ailing. Among men who are sick at heart, let
" us dwell free from affliction !

" Let us live happily then, free from care among the
" careworn. Among men who are eager, let us dwell
" free from eagerness !

"Let us live happily then, as those who have no
" hindrances ! We shall be like the bright gods who
" feed on happiness I"^

Surely all this is really an outburst in praise of the
state of those who had left the world, and had no
cares and no hindrances because they had entered the

^ Dhammapadar), verses 87, 88.
2 Ibid, verses 197—200.

gotama's ordee. 165

Society of Gotama's disciples. So it is clearly of life
in the Order that the beautiful lines are spoken ;

" When the wise man by earnestness has driven
Yanity far away, the terraced heights
Of wisdom doth he climb, and, free from care,
Looks down on the vain world, the careworn

crowd —
As he who stands upon a mountain-top
Looks down, serene, on toilers in the plains."

It is possible, no doubt, to object that it is the inward
state which is here referred to, and that we have
nothing more than the feeling expressed at greater
length in the well-known lines of Lucretius, where he
says:

"It may be sweet when on the great sea the winds
" trouble its waters to behold from land another's deep
"distress; not that it is a pleasure and delight that
" any should be afflicted, but because it is sweet to see
" from what evils you are yourself exempt. It may be
" sweet also to look upon the mighty struggles of war
"arrayed along the plains without sharing yourself in
"the danger. But nothing is more sweet than to hold
"the lofty and serene positions, well fortified by the
" learning of the wise, from which you may look down
" upon others, and see them wandering all abroad, and
" going astray in their search for the path of life ; see
"the contest among them of intellect, of rivalry, of

166 gotama's oeder.

'birth, the striving night and clay with surpassing
' effort to struggle up to the summit of power, and be
' masters of the world. 0 miserable minds of men !
' 0 blinded breasts ! in what darkness of life and in
'how great dangers is passed all this term of life,
' whatever its duration ! Why will you not see that
'nature craves for itself nothing more than that the
'man from whose body pain holds aloof, should in
'mind enjoy a feeling of pleasure, exempt from care
'and fear?"i

This analogy was already pointed out by Mr.
Childers, in whom we lost not only a scholar of quite
imusual promise, but also one whose real sympathy
with the deeper side of early Buddhism enabled him
to throw an unexpected light on many dark and diffi-
cult passages in their sacred writings. But he would
have been the first to maintain that the allusion of the
Buddhist lines is not only to Nirvana, but also to life
in the Order. Eeaders of Thomas a Kempis will find
it by no means difficult to understand the tone of mind
which, fully recognizing the possibility of goodness to
those who live in the world, still looks upon the state
of those who have left it as the proper and natural aim
of those who are earnestly bent upon the attainment of
the highest forms of the religious life.

It is the constant repetition of the allusion to such

^ Lucretius, Book ii. ad. init. "Suave mari magno," &o I
follow !RIr. l\Iunro's version.

gotama's order. 1G7

a view of life in similar passages, which leads iis to
the undoubting conclusion that a spirit of renunciation
of the world really filled the minds both of Gotama
himself and of his first disciples, and even to the sus-
picion that this feeling was very prevalent in early
Buddhist times, and prepared the hearts of those who
listened to early Buddhist teaching. The idea was in
the air ; men were already favourably inclined towards
it ; and the new movement contributed to it the ener-
getic motive force of a strong emotion, and the guiding
influence in the direction it should take.

I am quite aware that a cold criticism can point to
clear and painful evidence of mental weakness, of per-
sonal rivalries, even of moral failings, in some of the
early disciples ; and it may ask how it was possible for
such men to be moved by the kind of feelings suggested
in the passages I have just quoted. I have the greatest
respect for such criticism when it is dealing with points
of literary history or of philological investigation. But
it is much more likely to err on the negative than on
the positive side when it attempts to pass judgment on
the emotional, even fickle, movements of masses of men.

We have a curious instance of this in the case of one
of the greatest scholars England has produced. When,
at the first rise of monasticism in the basin of the Medi-
terranean, an enthusiasm for the solitary life, not unlike
that which was prevalent in the times we are discussing
in the valley of the Ganges, led men of all ranks and

1G8 gotama's oeder.

classes, and in incredible numbers, to devote themselves
to a religious life in retirement from the haunts of men,
this is the kind of explanation which Gibbon, paraphras-
ing the verses of a pagan litterateur, is pleased to give :
" The whole island is filled, or rather defiled, by men
' who fly from the light. They call themselves monks,
' or solitaries, because they choose to live alone, with-
'out any witnesses of their actions. They fear the
'gifts of fortune, from the apprehension of losing
' them; and lest they should be miserable, they embrace
'a life of voluntary wretchedness. How absurd is
' their choice ! how perverse their understanding ! to
'dread the evils, without being able to support the
' blessings of the human condition ! Either this melan-
'choly madness is the effect of disease, or else the
' consciousness of guilt urges these unhappy men to
' exercise on their own bodies the tortures which are
'inflicted on fugitive slaves by the hands of Justice."^
One is tempted to say, " How absurd is this judg-
' ment ! how perverse the understanding which can
'see no motives but these in conduct so opposed to
'the spirit of Yanity Fair!" The perhaps too elo-
quent pages of Montalembert tell a difierent tale ; but
there are witnesses enough among the Christian ere-
mites themselves to show how inadequate and one-sided
is such an estimate. Hear what Jerome savs, himself

1 Gibbon, c. 29 (ed. Bobn, iii. 328, 329). He is paraphrasing
Claudii Eutilii De Reditu Suo, i. 439—448.

gotama's oeder. 169

one of them, when he invites his fellow-christians to
join their ranks :

''0 desert, blooming with the flowers of Clirist !
"0 solitude, in which are found those stones of which
" the city of the great King is built in the Apocalypse !
'' 0 loneliness, delighting in intercourse in God ! What
''do j^ou, Brother, in secular life, who art greater
"than the world? How long shall the shadows of
"roofs oppress you? How long shall the prison-house
"of smoky cities enclose you? Believe me, I know
"not how much more light I gaze upon. It is well,
"having cast off the burden of the body, to fly ofl to
" the pure efi'ulgence of the sky.

" Do you fear poverty ? Christ calls the poor blessed.
" Do you dread labour ? IN'o athlete is crowned without
"sweat. Do you think of diet? Faith fears not
"hunger. Do 3^ou fear to lay your body, wasted with
"fasting, on the naked ground? The Lord will lie
" down with you. Do you shrink from the undressed
"hair of a neglected head? Your head is Christ.
"Are you fearful of the boundless extent of the soli-
"tude? You mentally walk in paradise. As often
" as you ascend thither in contemplation, you will not
"be in solitude." ^

The critic may think such thoughts absurd, and the
understanding that accepts them only perverse; but

Jerome, Ep. ad Heliodoruin (Op. ed. Erasm. i. f. 2).

170 gotama's order.

we may venture to sympathize a little with them, so
far, at least, as to enable ns to follow the history oi
those strange men who thought them. It seems to me,
I co-ifess, that such as this was the tone, the spirit,
that gave life to the monastic side of the early Buddhist
movement, and that in this respect we must accept the
evidence of the early Buddhist recluses themselves.

And I would go even further still. The passion
for renunciation among the early Buddhists did not
stand alone. It came comparatively earlier with them
than it came in the history of the Christian Church,
and it was strengthened and supported by other feel-
ings, more like those which animated the very first
disciples in New - Testament times. The history of
Buddhism, when the Pali Pitakas were being formed,
shows us the rise of monasticism coincident and com-
bined with the glow of faith that distinguishes the rise
of a new religion.

Chief among these is the strong attractive power of
the personal character of the founder of the religion.
"When the Buddhist Society was being formed, Gotama
was still living among them, and in daily contact with
them, as their guide and master and example; and
their love to him has tinged the Buddhist writings
with a tone of personal affection and reverence that is

gotama's ordeh. 171

occasionally very striking, and must have been a
powerful factor in the young Society.

Thus we are told at the end of the Sutta K"ipata
of an aged Brahman going to Gotama with the plain-
tive appeal, "I am old, feeble, colourless! My eyes
" are not clear, my hearing is not good ! Lest I should
"perish a fool on the way, tell me the Dhamma, that
"I may know how here in this world to escape decay
''and birth!"

Gotama sets forth the answer, in accordance with
the doctrine of Arahatship, that he must give up long-
ing for existence in any form, and must get rid of that
craving thirst which would lead to such existence being
renewed. The aged Brahman is convinced, the eyes of
his mind are opened ; he who was on the brink of death
feels himself saved just at the time when hope was
almost at an end. Bavari, an old friend and fellow-
Brahman, then apparently asks him what has wrought
the great change in him, for he is represented as re-
plying to Bavari :

" I will proclaim accordingly the way to the further
" shore" — so said the venerable Pingiya. " As he saw
"it, so he told it — he, the very wise, the passionless,
"the desireless Lord. For why should he speak
"falsely?"

But this reference to the teacher turns oif the old
man's thoughts even from the teaching, and he changes
the subject of his speech :

172 gotama's oeder.

" Well ! 1 will praise that beautiful voice ; the voice
' of Him who is without stain and folly ; who has left
' iiiTogancc and self-righteousness far behind !

" The darkness- dispelling Buddha, the all-seeing,
' who understands all conditions, who has overcome all
' existences, who is free from the passions, and has
' put an end to pain — rightly is he called the Buddha
' — he, 0 Brahmana, hath come nigh even to me.

''And so, as a bird would pass the dense jungle by,
' and take up his abode in the fruitful forest, even so
' I, leaving the men of narrow views, am like a swan
' who has gained the broad waters.

''Those who before explained to me the teaching of
' Gotama, saying, ' Thus was it, thus it shall be,' all
' that was only at secondhand, all that but added to
' my doubts.

"There is only one living who can dispel the dark-
' ness. That is the high-born, the luminous ; Gotama
' of great understanding, Gotama of great wisdom, who
'taught me the truth, the instantaneous, immediate
'destroyer of thirst, deliverance from distress — the
' like whereof is nowhere ! "

Then says Bavari to him, "Canst thou then stay
'away from him even for a moment, 0 Pingiya?"

And the old man rejoins :

" TTot even for a moment do I stay away from him,
' 0 Brahmana. I sec him in my mind and with my
'eye, vigilant, 0 Brahmana, night and day. In

gotama's order. 173

''reverencing liim do I spend the night; therefore,
"methinks, I am not far from him.

''Belief and joy, mind and thought, incline me
" towards the doctrine of Gotama. Whichsoever way
"the very wise man goes, that self-same way my
"heart, too, turns.

"I am worn out, and old, and feeble. 'Tis true,
"therefore, my body cannot go. But in my thoughts
"I always go there; for my heart, 0 Brahmana, is
"joined to him!"

And as Pingiya sat there, picturing to his friend his
reverence for Gotama, and telling how he was not fiir
from him, there shone round about them a golden light,
and lo ! a vision, sent forth by the Buddha himself,
appeared before them. And Pingiya saw once more,
and with his bodily eyes, the Blessed One standing, as
it were, before him, and saying :

"As the faith of Vakkhali became set free from
"doubt, and the faith of Bhadravudha grew clear, and
"of Gotama of Alavi, even so shalt thou, too, make
"clear thy faith; thou shalt reach, 0 Pingiya, the
" further shore (the haven that is outside) of the realm
" of death."

It was perhaps only a perverse intelligence that
could so exaggerate the insight and the wisdom of
Gotama ; it may be absurd to say that a vision of the
Buddha could thus really and outwardly have appeared;
the whole story may be a legend. But it must have

174 gotama's oeder.

been tlie hand of love that has penned a legend
so touching and so beautiful, and which affords evi-
dence— equally strong, whether it be poetic fancy, or
a relation of what the writer thought to be actual
fact — of the mighty influence of Gotama's personal
character.

How the Great Teacher used that influence as regards
the Society is set forth at the beginning of the Book
of the Great Decease. It is there recorded that Gotama
said to the assembled brethren :

" ' I will teach you, 0 mendicants, seven conditions
"'of the welfare of the Society. Listen well and
" 'attend, and I will speak.'

" ' Even so, Lord,' said the brethren in assent to the
" Blessed One ; and he spake as follows :

" ' So long, 0 mendicants, as the brethren meet
"'together in full and frequent assemblies — so long
" 'as they meet together in concord, and rise in con-
"'cord, and carry out in concord the duties of the
" ' order — so long as the brethren shall establish no-
"' thing that has not been already prescribed, and
" ' abrogate nothing that has been already established,
" ' and act in accordance with the rules of the order as
" ' now laid down — so long as the brethren honour and
" 'esteem and revere and support the elders of expe-
" 'rience and long standing, the fathers and leaders of

gotama's okder. 175

*' '■ tlic order, and hold it a point of duty to hearken to
'' ' their words — so long as the brethren fall not undei-
'''the influence of that craving which, springing up
" ' within them, would give rise to renewed existence
'' < — so long as the brethren delight in a life of soli-
" 'tude — so long as the brethren so train their minds
"'that good and holy men shall come to them, and
"'those who have come shall dwell at ease — so long
"'may the brethren be expected, not to decline, but
" ' to prosper. So long as these seven conditions shall
" ' continue to exist among the brethren, so long as
" ' they are well instructed in these conditions, so long
" ' may the brethren be expected not to decline, but to
"'prosper.

" ' Other seven conditions of welfare will I teach
"'you, 0 brethren. Listen well and attend, and I
" ' will speak.'

"And on their expressing their assent, he spake as
" follows :

" ' So long as the brethren shall not engage in, or
" 'be fond of, or be connected with business — so long
" ' as the brethren shall not be in the habit of, or be
" ' fond of, or be partakers in idle talk — so long as the
"'brethren shall not be addicted to, or be fond of,
" ' or indulge in slothfulness — so long as the brethren
" ' shall not frequent, or be fond of, or indulge in
" ' society — so long as the brethren shall neither have,
"'nor fall under the influence of, sinful desires — so

176 gotama's oedee.

' long as the brethren shall not become the friends,
' companions, or intimates of sinners — so long as the
' brethren shall not come to a stop on their way [to
' Nirvana^] because they have attained to any lesser
' thing — so long may the brethren be expected not
' to decline, but to prosper.

" ' So long as these conditions shall continue to exist
' among the brethren, so long as they are instructed
'in these conditions, so long may the brethren be
' expected not to decline, but to prosper.
" ^ Other seven conditions of welfare will I teach
'you, 0 brethren. Listen well and attend, and I
' will speak.'

*' And on their expressing their assent, he spake as
follows :

" ' So long as the brethren shall be full of faith,
•modest in heart, afraid of sin, full of learning,
' strong in energy, active in mind, and full of wisdom,
' so long may the brethren be expected not to decline,
' but to prosper.

" ' So long as these conditions shall continue to exist
' among the brethren, so long as they are instructed
'in these conditions, so long may the brethren be
' expected not to decline, but to prosper.'

^ This is an interesting analogue to Philippians iii. 13 : "I count
not myself to have apprehended : but this one thing I do, forgetting
those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things
which are before, I press toward the mark." ....

gotama's order. 177

'' ' Other seven conditions of welfare will I teach
' ' you, 0 brethren. Listen well and attend, and I
' ' will speak.'

"And on their expressing their assent, he spake as
' follows :

*' ' So long as the brethren shall exercise themselves
' ' in the seven-fold higher wisdom, that is to say, in
' ' mental activity, search after truth, energy, joy,
' ' peace, earnest contemplation, and equanimity of
' ' mind, so long may the brethren be expected not to
' ' decline, but to prosper.

" ' So long as these conditions shall continue to exist
' ' among the brethren, so long as they are instructed
' ' in these conditions, so long may the brethren be
' ' expected not to decline, but to prosper.

'' ' Other seven conditions of welfare will I teach
' ' you, 0 brethren. Listen well and attend, and I
' ' will speak.'

''And on their expressing their assent, he spake as
' follows :

" ' So long as the brethren shall exercise themselves
' ' in the seven-fold perception due to earnest thought,
' ' that is to say, the perception of impermanency, of
' ' non-individuality, of corruption, of the danger of
' ' sin, of sanctification, of purity of heart, of Nirvana,
' ' so long may the brethren be expected not to decline,
' ' but to prosper.

" ' So long as these conditions shall continue to exist

N

178 gotama's okder.

'' 'among the brethren, so long as they are instructed
" ' in these conditions, so long may the brethren be
*' 'expected not to decline, but to prosper.

" ' Six conditions of welfare will I teach you, 0
" ' brethren. Listen well and attend, and I will speak.'

" And on their expressing their assent, he spake as
"follows:

" ' So long as the brethren shall persevere in kind-
"'ness of action, speech and thought, amongst the
"'saints, both in public and in private — so long as
'"they shall divide without partiality, and share in
"'common with the upright and the holy, all such

things as they receive in accordance with the just

provisions of the order, down even to the mere con-
" ' tents of a begging bowl — so long as the brethren
" 'shall live among the saints in the practice, both in
'"public and in private, of those virtues which (un-
" 'broken, intact, unspotted, unblemished) are produc-
'"tive of freedom^ and praised by the wise; which
" 'are untarnished by the desire of future life, or by
"'the belief in the efficacy of outward acts;^ and

1 Buddhagliosa takes this in a spiritual sense : "These virtues
"are bhujissani because they bring one to the state of a free man
" by delivering him from the slavery of craving."

2 The commentator says : " These virtues are called aparamat-
"thani because they are untarnished by craving or delusion, and
" because no one can say of him who practises them, ' You have
"'been already guilty of such and such a sin.'" Craving is here
the hope of a future life in heaven, and delusion the belief in the

ii i
ii i

gotama's order. 179

" ' which are conducive to high and holy thoughts — so
long as the brethren shall live among the saints,
cherishing, both in public and in private, that noble
"'and saving faith which leads to the complete de-
struction of the sorrow of him who acts according
to it — so long may the brethren be expected not to
" ' decline, but to prosper.

" ' So long as these conditions shall continue to exist
" 'among the brethren, so long as they are instructed
*' ' in these conditions, so long may the brethren be
" 'expected not to decline, but to prosper.'

'* And whilst the Blessed One stayed there at Eaga-
" gaha on the Vulture's Peak, he held that comprehen-
" sive religious talk with the brethren on the nature of
''upright conduct, and of earnest contemplation, and
" of intelligence: ' Great is the fruit, great the advan-
" ' tage of earnest contemplation when set round with
" ' upright conduct. Great is the fruit, great the advan-
" ' tage of intellect when set round with earnest con-
" ' templation. The mind set round with intelligence
" ' is freed from the great evils, that is to say, from
*' ' sensuality, from individuality, from delusion, and
" ' from ignorance.'"

This last paragraph is spoken of as if it were a well-
known summary, and it is constantly repeated after-
wards in the same Sutta. The word I have rendered

efficacy of rites and ceremonies (the two nissayas), which are con-
demned as unworthy inducements to virtue.

n2

ISO gotama's order.

"earnest contemplation" is samadhi, whieli occu2)ies
in the Pali Pitakas very much the same position as faith
does in the New Testament ; and this section shows
that the relative importance of samadhi panna and
slla played a part in early Buddhism just as the dis-
tinction between faith, reason and works, did after-
wards in Western theology. It would be difficult to
find a passage in which the Buddhist view of the
relation of these conflicting ideas is stated with greater
beauty of thought, or equal succintness of form.

What would happen to the Society after Gotama's
death, formed the subject of a conversation recorded
in the same book as having taken place a few days
before his death between him and Ananda, his beloved
disciple and constant personal attendant, the St. John,
as Moggallama is the St. Peter, and Sariputta the St.
Paul, of the Buddhist narratives.

" Now when the Blessed One had thus entered upon
' the rainy season, there fell upon him a dire sickness,
'and sharp pains came upon him, even unto death.
'But the Blessed One, mindful and self-possessed,
' bore them without complaint.

''Then this thought occurred to the Blessed One:
' ' It would not be right for me to pass away from
' ' existence without addressing the disciples, without
' ' taking leave of the order. Let me now, by a strong
' ' effort of the will, bend this sickness down again,
' ' and keep my hold on life till the allotted time be
' ' come.'

gotama's order. is I

*' And the Blessed One, by a strong effort of the will,
bent that sickness do^vn again, and kept his hold on
life till the time he fixed upon should come. And
the sickness abated upon him.

"IN'ow very soon after, the Elessed One began to
recover ; when he had quite got rid of the sickness,
he went out from the monastery, and sat down behind
the monastery on a seat spread out there. And the
venerable Ananda went to the place where the Blessed
One was, and saluted him, and took a seat respect-
fully on one side, and addressed the Blessed One, and
said : ' I have beheld. Lord, how the Blessed One was
' in health, and I have beheld how the Blessed One
' had to suffer. And though at the sight of the sick-
' ness of the Blessed One my body became weak as a
' creeper, and the horizon became dim to me, and my
' faculties were no longer clear, yet notwithstanding
'I took some little comfort from the thought that
' the Blessed One would not pass away from existence
'until at least he had left instructions as touching
' the order.'

"'What, then, Ananda? Does the order expect
'that of me? I have preached the truth without
' making any distinction between exoteric and esote-
' ric doctrine : for in respect of the truths, Ananda,
' the Tathagata has no such thing as the closed fist
' of a teacher, who keeps some things back. Surely,
' Ananda, should there be any one who harbours the

182 gotama's order.

"'thought, 'It is I who will lead the brotherhood,'
" ' or, ' The order is dependent upon me,' it is he who
" ' should lay down instructions in any matter concern-
'' ' ing the order. Now the Tathagata, Ananda, thinks
" 'not that it is he who should lead the brotherhood,
" ' or that the order is dependent upon him. Why then
*' ' should he leave instructions in any matter concern-
"'ing the order? I too, 0 Ananda, am now grown
" 'old and full of years, my journey is drawing to its
" ' close, I have reached my sum of days, I am turning
" ' eighty years of age ; and just as a worn-out cart,
" ' Ananda, can only with much additional care be
" 'made to move along, so, methinks, the body of the
" 'Tathagata can only be kept going with much addi-
" ' tional care. It is only, Ananda, when the Tathagata,
" ' ceasing to attend to any outward thing, or to expe-
"'rience any sensation, becomes plunged in that
" ' devout meditation of heart which is concerned with
'"no material object — it is only then that the body of
" ' the Tathagata is at ease.

"'Therefore, 0 Ananda, be ye lamps unto your-
" ' selves. Be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake
" ' yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the
" ' truth as a lamp. Hold fast as a refuge to the truth.
" ' Look not for refuge to any one besides yourselves.
" ' And how, Ananda, is a brother to be a lamp unto
" 'himself, a refuge to himself, betaking himself to no
" ' external refuge, holding fast to the truth as a lamp.

gotama's order. 183

'holding fast as a refuge to the truth, looking not
'for refuge to any one besides himself?

" ' Herein, 0 Ananda, let a brother, as he dwells
'in the body, so regard the body that he, being
' strenuous, thoughtful and mindful, may, whilst in
'the world, overcome the grief which arises from
' bodily craving — while subject to sensations, let him
' continue so to regard the sensations that he, being
' strenuous, thoughtful and mindful, may, whilst in
' the world, overcome the grief which arises from the
'sensations — and so, also, as he thinks, or reasons,
' or feels, let him overcome the grief which arises
' from the craving due to ideas, or to reasoning, or
' to feeling.

"'And whosoever, Ananda, either now or after I
'am dead, shall be a lamp unto themselves, and a
' refuge unto themselves, shall betake themselves to
' no external refuge, but holding fast to the truth as
' their lamp, and holding fast as their refuge to the
' truth, shall look not for refuge to any one besides
' themselves — it is they, Ananda, among the Bhik-
' khus (the members of my Society) who shall reach
' the very topmost height^ — but they must be willing
'to learn.'"

* That is, Nirvana, Arahatshipi

184 gotama's order.

One might go on quoting such passages ; l)ut our
time is limited. I have had only an hour in which to
say something of the great Order, the history of which
stretches, for more than two thousand years, over the
history of many peoples, compared with whose num-
bers those of England sink away into insignificance.
Having to choose what I should omit, I have tried to
deal rather with the kernel than the husk, rather with
the heart of the matter than its form, rather with the
hopes and feelings and affections that gave rise to the
Society, and have been its life-blood and its protection
throughout its long career, than with the outward
phenomena of dress and residence and food, or even of
ecclesiastical history, of missions, of church councils,
and of the patronage of kings. And I have been the
more inclined to do this, since the line of thought pur-
sued in this Lecture has not, so far as I know, been
treated of elsewhere, and since there is not the slightest
danger of any European ever entering the Buddhist
Order. We shall be quite ready, on the contrary, with
a short and sharp judgment on the folly and useless-
ness of abandoning the world.

At the same time I would venture, in conclusion, to
liazard the remark, that it may be open to doubt whe-
ther the view of life which led the early Buddhists to
do so was further off in one direction from the true one,
than the complicated competitions, the unworthy social

gotama's order. 185

struggles, the eager, craving restlessness, of this Baby-
lon of ours is on the other. And of one thing I
am quite sure, that Europeans in Buddhist countries
are often misled by ignorance to jump to harsh con-
clusions from the outward appearances of Buddhism.
A European sees a strange-looking native, dressed in
curious robes, and almost grotesque-looking from the
effect of a closely shaven head, walking slowly along
with a fan in his hand. If he follows him to his
home under the palm-trees, he will admire the pic-
turesque appearance of the cleanly-swept ground, the
flowering shrubs, the quivering silver leaves of the
Bo-tree, and the graceful shape of the little Buddhist
tope that adorns the enclosure. At the further end
there will be the monk's abode, and perhaps a dark
chamber containing one or more j)ainted images of the
Buddha, before which are stone slabs on which the
villagers place flowers from the shrubs outside. The
walls and ceilings may be painted in gorgeous colours,
not arranged according to modern taste ; and the visitor
may chance to see a worshipper muttering some unin-
telligible words before the image. These the on-looker
naturally takes to be a prayer to the idol ; and he goes
away perhaps with a feeling of contempt for the uncouth
and lazy priest, and with a comfortable sense of how
much superior a white man is to those brown and
hatless idolaters, and how much better than theirs are
his own ideas and his own education.

186 GOTAMA^S ORDER.

Kow there is a great deal to be said for the truth of
his opinion. But it is not the whole truth. The par-
ticular brother of the Buddhist Order of Eecluses whom
he has met may be indolent, or ignorant, or self-righ-
teous. There are such men to be found in the ranks
of the clergy of all religions. But he may be very
much the reverse. There is reason to believe that the
ancient spirit of the Order is by no means extinct in
China and Japan, or even in Tibet. And I know from
personal experience that it survives in Ceylon.

Go and talk to the yellow-robed and tonsured recluse
— not, of course, through an interpreter, or out of a
book of phrases ; you must know not only his language,
but something of Buddhist ideas ; and you must speak
with him as man to man, not as the wise to the barba-
rian. You will certainly be courteous ; for whatever
else a Buddhist Bhikkhu may be, he will be sure to
give proof of courtesy, and to maintain a dignified
demeanour. And it will be strange if you do not find
a new world of thought and of feeling opening out
before you.

I once knew such a man. He would have seemed
nothing to a passing observer but a thin and diseased-
looking monk, rather mean in stature. When he first
came to me, the hand of death was already upon him.
He was sinking into the grave from the effects of a
painful and incurable malady. I had heard of his
learning as a Pali scholar, and of his illness, and was

GOTAMA^S ORDEK. 187

grateful to him for leaving his home, under such cir-
cumstances, to teach a stranger. There was a strange
light in his sunken eyes, and he was constantly turning
away from questions of Pali to questions of Buddhism.
I found him versed in all the poetry and ethics of the
Suttas, and was glad to hear him talk. There was an
indescribable attraction about him, a simplicity, a high-
mindedness, that filled me with reverence. I used
sometimes to think that the personal impression of
Yatramulle Unnanse might have led me to colour my
judgment of him too highly ; but Mr. Childers told
me, after my return to England, that the dying Bud-
dhist scholar had made a similar impression upon him.
We arc not likely to have been both mistaken. And
throughout the long history of Gotama's Order, its
influence over those who had eyes to see, and ears to
hear, must have been moulded and guided by many
such men as Yatramulle Unnanse, or it would not have
been the power that it has been. Whatever we may
think of the folly of abandoning the world, let us at
least be sure of this, that the teachings of the Buddhist
Suttas have not been recorded, the Buddhist Order was
not founded, altogether in vain.

LECTURE VI.
LATEE FOEMS OF BUDDHISM.

We have now come, Ladies and Gentlemen, to tlie
end of our journey, and I am afraid you will feel how
little has been accomplished. I have been able only
to touch the fringe of a great subject, to dwell only
upon a few phases of it which are of more especial
interest from the point of view imposed upon me by
the comparative aim of all these Lectures. What has
been left unsaid is a hundred times more in extent,
and in many directions more interesting perhaps, and
more important, than what has been said. But you,
who have listened with so kind an attention to my
imperfect endeavours, will appreciate, I trust, the dif-
ficulties of my task. I suppose there are about fifty
thousand discourses and lectures delivered every week
in England alone on Christianity. Who shall count
the hours that have been devoted during the past 1800
years, in many a University, to the public discussion
of what Christianity is, what it means, what it should

LATER FOrcMS OF BUDDHISil. 189

toach us ? The professors have spoken with a kind of
authority on their subject to which a Hibbert Lecturer
can lay no cUiim on his. Have they finished yet ? Is
the question solved ? Are we all quite agreed as to
the origin, the growth, the history of Christianity?
The wisest Doctor in Divinity would find it difficult
to give in six hours even a summary of our disputes.
How much, then, of Christianity could he explain, and
from the comparative standpoint, in that time, to Bud-
dhists, however cultured, however ready to hear ?

And the problem of Buddhism is no less difficult,
no less immense. The Buddhism of I^epal and Tibet
differs from the Buddhism of Ceylon as much as the
Christianity of Eome or of Moscow differs from that of
Scotland or Wales. The Buddhism of Mongolia and
China is far removed from either of these, and the
Buddhism of Japan has peculiarities all its own. The
history of Buddhism, therefore, in each of the countries
where it was adopted requires separate treatment. It
is incorrect to speak, as is so often done, of Northern
and Southern Buddhism as the only two great divisions
into which Buddhism had been divided. There was a
unity in Southern Buddhism ; but there has been no
such unity in Northern Buddhism. We may talk,
indeed, of Northern Buddhisms ; but it would be better
to keep the Buddhism of each of the northern countries
in which it has been adopted separate and distinct,
both in our thoughts and in our language.

190 LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM.

And even in each country where it has been received,
Buddhism, though it has acquired a distinctive colour-
ing from its new surrounding, has by no means re-
mained permanently the same. The Catholic Church of
Christianity is wont to boast that it has never changed.
But from century to century the men who form the
Church have lived under the influence of changing cir-
cumstances, of varying ideas, which have made them
believe differently from those who lived before them.
They may repeat the same form of words, they may
hold to the same form of creed, but they repeat the
words in a sense not quite the same, they hold the
creed so as to lay stress in different proportions on its
various parts. So Buddhism also claims never to have
changed. The Buddhist Order has adhered, in orthodox
countries, to the same Vinaya, has declared its faith in
the same Suttas, fi'om the time when the Pitakas reached
their present form, more than two thousand years ago,
down to to-day. And even in the countries where
the Pali Pitakas are forgotten, the Buddhists claim to
follow the authority of tile unchanging words of the
Buddha himself ; and they would say, in the words of
the lines quoted by the Jataka Book from the Buddha
Vagsa :^

"As a clod, cast up in the air, doth surely fall to
the ground.

1 Buddhist Birth Stories, p. 18.

LATER FORilS OF LUDDIIISil. 191

*' So surely endurcth the word of the glorious Bud-

dhas for ever.
" As the death of all things that have life is certain

and sure,
*' So surely endureth the word of the glorious Bud-

dhas for ever.
"As, when night to its end hath come, the sun

shall certainly rise,
*' So surely endureth the word of the glorious Bud-

dhas for ever.
" As the roar of the lion is sure when in morn he

hath left his lair,
" So surely endurcth the word of the glorious Bud-

dhas for ever."

It is a vain boast. The word of the Buddhas may
endure, but the minds of men are ever changing. The
history of Buddhism from its commencement to its
close is an epitome of the religious history of mankind.
And we have not solved the problem of Buddhism
when we have understood the faith of the early Bud-
dhists.

It is in this respect that the study of later Buddhism
in Ceylon, Burma and Siam, in Nepal and in Tibet,
in China, Mongolia and Japan, is only second in im-
portance to the study of early Buddhism. And we
owe a debt of gratitude to those who have attempted
to set forth the fate of Buddhism in all these countries,

192 LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM.

to Spence Hardy, Bishop Bigandet, and Alabaster, to
Biijendra Lai Mitra, Korosi, Koppen and Foncaux,
to the brothers Schlagintweit and the fathers Hue and
Gabet, to Schiefner and Wassilief, to Dr. Eitel, Dr.
Edkins and to Mr. Beal. The history of the later
fortunes of the Buddhist faith; the differing forms
which it has assumed in different minds ; the modifi-
cations it has undergone in various countries under the
influence of ideas foreign, even antagonistic, to itself;
the way in which its fundamental doctrines have been
overshadowed and destroyed by the persistent notions
of Animism, by the growth of erroneous views as to
the Buddha and the Buddhas, by the exaggerated
importance attached to its mysticism, to its negative
teaching, — all this will be of the greatest value in
aiding us to understand the progress of religious ideas
among mankind, and more especially in illustrating the
causes that have been at w^ork in a similar way on the
shores of the Mediterranean.

When we remember how fundamentally opposed are
the views of life set forth in the Pali Pitakas to those
set forth in the New Testament, and how different are
the characters, the ideas, the habits and customs, of
some of the peoples among whom the two religions
have been adopted, we can then perceive how instruc-
tive is the fact — one of the most curious facts in the
whole history of the world — that Buddhism and Chris-
tianity have both developed, in the course of fifteen

LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 19

o

hundred years, into sacerdotal and sacramental systems,
each, with its bells and rosaries and images and holy
water ; each with its services in dead languages, with
choirs and processions and creeds and incense, in which
the laity are spectators only ; each with its mystic rites
and ceremonies performed by shaven priests in gor-
geous robes ; each with its abbots and monks and nuns,
of many grades ; each with its worship of virgins, saints
and angels ; its reverence to the Virgin and the Child ;
its confessions, fasts and purgatory; its idols, relics,
symbols and sacred pictures ; its shrines and pilgi-im-
ages; each with its huge monasteries and gorgeous
cathedrals; its powerful hierarchy and its wealthy
cardinals; each, even, ruled over by a Pope, with a
triple tiara on his head and the sceptre of temporal
power in his hand, the representative on earth of an
eternal Spirit in the heavens !

If all this be chance, it is a most stupendous miracle
of coincidence ; it is, in fact, ten thousand miracles.
And it cannot be objected that the resemblance is in
externals only. The principles which bind each of
these two organizations together, which give them
their recuperative vital power, are also similar. Each
of the two Churches claims to be guided by the eternal
Spirit, who is especially present in the infallible Head
of the Church; each lays peculiar stress upon the
mystic sacrament in which the priest reverently swal-
lows a material thing, and by so doing believes himself

o

194 LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM.

to become partaker in some mysterious way of a part
of the Divine Being, who, during the ceremony, has
become incorporated therein. And the most real
resemblance lies deeper still, — in the similarity of the
conditions under which the similar developements took
place. Each had its origin at a time when the new
faith was adopted by the invading hordes of barbarian
men bursting in upon an older, a more advanced civi-
lization— when men in body, but children in intellect,
quick to feel emotion, and impregnated with Ani-
mistic fallacies, became at once the conquerors and the
pupils of men who had passed through a long training
in religious feeling and in philosophical reasoning.
Then do we find that strange mixture of speculative
acuteness and emotional ignorance ; of earnest devotion
to edification, and the blindest confidence in erroneous
methods ; of a real philanthropy, and a priestly love
of power; of unhesitating self-sacrifice, and the most
selfish struggles for personal pre-eminence, which cha-
racterize the early centuries of Eoman Catholicism and
of Tibetan Lamaism alike.

Those who prefer to adhere to the New Testament
in the one case, or the Pali Suttas in the other, are
sometimes apt to look only at the worse side of all this,
and to regard, therefore, the whole movement of Roman
Catholicism, or of Tibetan Lamaism, with aversion and
contempt. But it is no slight merit to have rescued
nations from barbarism. And in the long history of

LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 195

the gradual developement of what, in Buddhism, is
called the Greater Vehicle, it was the Society, the
Church, that instigated or encouraged all that was
truest and best in the countries where it prevailed.
Those who look only for historical sequences, can watch
the centuries, as they pass before their minds, with an
unshaken equanimity, a full impartiality; and can
recognize — with a kind of awe that fosters sympathy —
how insignificant is the individual, how irresistible are
the forces working in him and around him, how cer-
tainly will similar causes work out, even in the midst
of the greatest differences, similar results.

It would be a worthy subject for a future course of
Hibbert Lectures to trace out in detail, and with all
necessary qualifications, this marvellous parallel. I
can only venture here on two remarks — the first in
justification of my own choice of subject, the second
in protest against a way in which the subject of later
Buddhism is sometimes treated.

It is impossible rightly to understand any one phase
of later Buddhism in any country, without starting
from the standpoint of the earlier Buddhism of the
Pali Pitakas. No one can write the history of later
Buddhism, say in Siam or in China, without being
thoroughly acquainted with the Pali Suttas. The very
interest of the later inquiries lies in the causes that
have produced the manifold changes that they will
disclose. We must know not only into what, but also

o 2

196 LATER FOEMS OF BUDDHISM.

from what, the changes have taken place. This is
really a truism ; and in the parallel history, with which
we are so much more familiar, would be undisputed.
A Buddhist, for instance, would never understand
Spanish Christianity unless he traced it up, in a
manner reasonably and sufficiently complete, from the
earliest Church. No other method would keep him
safe from constant misinterpretations of the phenomena
he saw around him, of the very meaning of the litera-
ture on which he would rely.

And, secondly, the whole value of the inquiries into
later Buddhism will be lost if they be directed to a
purpose which they cannot be reasonably expected to
serve. What should we say of a Buddhist, were he
to use the writings of St. Augustine as a source from
which he might ascertain the opinions of St. Paul, and
not as a source of evidence of how those opinions had
been, by the time of Augustine, developed? What
would be the use of a book in which the opinions of
Christ were set forth as obtained from the tomes of
Calvin? or, allow me to add, from the sermons of
some eminent divine of the nineteenth century in
England ? In the same way we must not expect to
find the teachings of Gotama quite unadulterated in
the speculations of some Chinese worthy who lived
five hundred years after the Christian era, that is to
say, a thousand years after Gotama was born. And if
we want to investigate the opinions of early Buddhists,

LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 197

we miist not use, as our source of evidence, the very-
interesting Sanskrit or Tibetan writings of Nepalese or
Tibetan Doctors of the Law.

If, for instance, you want to have a thoroughly
erroneous and unreliable view of early Buddhism, let
me recommend to your perusal a much-praised work
by M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, entitled, " Le Bouddha
" et sa Eeligion." This is almost entirely based on a
French translation, through the Tibetan, of a Sanskrit
work called the Lalita Vistara — a poem of unknown
date and authorship, but probably composed in Nepal,
and by some Buddhist poet who lived some time be-
tween six hundred and a thousand years after the birth
of the Buddha. As evidence of what early Buddhism
actually was, it is of about the same value as some
mediaeval poem would be of the real facts of the Gospel
history; and when used for the purposes for which
M. St. Hilaire has used it, its very real value, as evi-
dence of Nepalese beliefs at the time when it
was composed, is lost sight of and forgotten.

This question of the authority of the Lalita Vistara
is so important, the work is so often referred to as
decisive on questions of early Buddhism, that every
one who is reading books on the subject will do well
to ascertain and bear in mind what is known about its
date.

198 LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM.

M. Foucaux has stated, and it has constantly been
repeated after him, that it was one of the books received
into the canon by the Council held under the Buddhist
king Kanishka, about a hundred years after Chi'ist.
Now the sole account we have of that Council, our sole
authority for what took place at it, is derived from the
travels of the famous Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Thsang,
who visited India some hundreds of years afterwards.
And even he neither mentions the Lalita Vistara in
connection with the Council, nor does he say that any
canon of sacred writings was settled at the Council ;
nor is there, indeed, any evidence of the existence of
any canon of Buddhist Scriptures at all, other than the
Pali one, till many centuries later.

Whence, then, the idea that the Lalita Vistara was
included in a canon by that Council ? It is true that
the Pali chroniclers affirm that the Pali Pitakas were
rehearsed at Asoka's Council, which was held at about
the year 250 B.C. at Patna. But what kind of cer-
tainty can be given to the argument that therefore
those who held Kanishka' s Council 350 years after-
wards would probably rehearse their sacred books, that
those books would probably be in Sanskrit, and that
among those books the Lalita Vistara would probably
be included? The chain of an argument is only as
strong as its weakest link ; when all its links are as
weak as these, it is wiser to leave it alone, and turn
to some evidence a little more reliable.

LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 199

This we have in the fact that the Lalita Vistara has
been translated. We have the original text in an edi-
tion published in Calcutta ; and on comparing it with
the Gya Cher Eol Pa, the Tibetan work which, as above
referred to, has been published with a complete French
translation by M. Foucaux — the most competent scholar
in Europe for the task — we find that the two agree.
The Tibetan, as judged by M. Foucaux's version, is in
all substantial respects what we understand by an exact
translation of the Sanskrit as edited by Eajendra Lai
Mitra for the Bibliotheca Indica. Now M. Foucaux
assigns the Tibetan version to some date, which cannot
be earlier, but may be much later, than the sixth cen-
tury of our era, or a thousand years after the birth of
Gotama. Here, then, we are on firm ground. What-
ever the coiTcct date of the Tibetan version may turn
out to be, it will be conclusive evidence of the existence
of the Lalita Vistara at that date. The moment we
leave this point, however, we come into difficulty.

Thus, for instance, the learned translator goes on to
argue, from the existence of four Chinese translations,
dating at intervals of a century or so earlier, of works
whose original titles were similar in meaning to that
of the Lalita Vistara, that our present Sanskrit work
with that title is necessarily older than those transla-
tions. But it is surely essential first to ascertain whe-
ther they were really translations of the same work.
This has not yet been done ; and until it has been done

200 LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM.

we have no external evidence which would justify the
assignment of the Lalita Vistara to any date earlier
than the uncertain one of its Tibetan version. All
that we can at present say is, that books of a similar
character were in existence as early as six or seven
hundred years after the birth of Gotama, and that one
of these may turn out to be substantially the same as
ours.

Even this hope is founded on the fact that two of
these Chinese works, themselves so much later than
early Euddhism, consist of chapters whose names in
Chinese correspond in meaning to the Sanskrit names
of the chapters of the Lalita Yistara. Now when two
books on the same subject are divided into the same
number of chapters, with practically identical titles,
one would naturally suppose that the two works must
be the same. That is, however, unfortunately by no
means certain. Mr. Beal, to whose labours in these
fields of inquiry we owe almost the whole of our know-
ledge, has translated from the Chinese a work to which
he gives the English title of the ''D ham ma pa da
"from the Buddhist Canon." The Chinese title
is Fa Khieu Pi Hu; that is, "Parables connected
"with the Book of Scripture Texts ;"i and there is a
well-known book in the Pali Pitakas called the Dham-
ma-padaij, or Collection of Dhamma- verses, that is,

So Mr. Eeal's "Introduction," p. 21.

■\

LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 201

Verses found in the Dhamma books, or Verses relating
to the Dhamma. Mr. Beal, by the title he has chosen
for his abstract of the Chinese Text, conveys the im-
pression that the Chinese work and the Pali one are
the same. The opening words of his Preface are:
''There are four principal copies of Dhammapada in
" Chinese ;" he calls the Chinese books generally
"faithful versions of works everywhere known in
"India," and this particular work a "version of the
"Dhammapada." The Chinese work, too, has thirty-
nine chapters; and of these, twenty-six have titles
which (in meaning) are the same, or very nearly the
same, as the titles of the twenty-six chapters into
which the Pali work is divided. And yet, in spite of
all this, the two works are essentially different ! They
are written on a different plan; the Chinese is evi-
dently much later (probably some centuries later) than
the Pali one ; and though a few of the verses chosen,
from the Dhamma books, for insertion in the Dham-
mapadag, recur, in a more or less mangled shape, in
the course of the stories constituting the Fa Khieu Pi
Hu, the great bulk of the earlier work is not found in
the later one, and the great bulk of the later work is
not found in the earlier one.^

^ Of course none of the Introductory Stories occur in the Pali
"book ; and as regards the verses themselves, the correctness of what
I have said will appear from the following analysis, which is arranged
for purposes of comparison in parallel columns. The verses found

202

LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM.

The two books are about as much, and about as
little, alike as two modern hymn-books; and to call
the later Chinese work " The Dhammapada," is very
much the same as if a publisher were to call a volume

in the Pali work are placed in the first column when they recur in
the Chinese work, the second column giving the page of Mr. Beal's
translation of the Chinese work where similar verses occur in it.

Dhammapada.

Fa Khieu Pi Hu.

Dhammapada.

Fa Khieu Pi Hu

1

63

107

87

2

64

108

89

11

64

109

90

12

65

127

93

13

65

128

14

66

137

95

16

67

138

95

17

67

139

96

43

73

140

96

44

75

141

97 ■

45

75

212

119

46

75

213

119

64

76

214

119

58

76

218

120

59

76

229

122

62

77

230

122

63

77

243

125

64

77

259

127

65

78

260

126

67

78

261

126

80

79

264

127

81

79

265

127

82

80

270

127

96

81

324

145

97

81

326

146

98

82

338

148

99

82

383

163

LATER FORMS OF BUDDHISM.

203

of religious tales containing about one-seventh of the
hymns included in that well-known and much-respected
work, by the distinctive title of "Hymns Ancient
and Modern." Both the likeness and the difference
between two such books and between these two Bud-
dhist books would be due to causes of a similar kind.
The Pali work and the Chinese one are alike because
the Chinese one is derived from some work descended
from an ancestry related to the Pali one; and it is
different because it is the outcome of a different school,
and gives expression to a belief which, though ori-
ginally the same, has passed through various stages of
modification, which have made it essentially different.
Chinese works bearing similar titles, and even divided
into chapters bearing similar titles, are not necessarily,
therefore, " translations" of any Indian work with a
like name. I am quite aware that there are Chinese
works that are translations of Indian ones; but no
Chinese work has yet been published which is a trans-
lation of any Indian work, whether Sanskrit or Pali,
known to us. All that I ask for is greater care in
speaking of Chinese works as "the same" as their

Dhammapada.
384
393

Fa Khieu Pi Hu.
163
163

Dhammapada, Fa Khieu Pi Hu.
394 164

410 164

Total, 58 verses, out of a total in the Pali Dhammapada of 423,
recurring (some of them much changed) in the corresponding
chapters of the Fa Khieu Pi Hu. See, further, my review in the
Academy for August, 1878.

204 INDIVIDUALITY.

Indian prototypes, without sufficient evidence ; and I
have no doubt that real translations will reward the
search of students of Chinese Buddhism, the value of
whose labours, and especially of those of Mr. Beal,
every one will be anxious to acknowledge as beyond
dispute.

This argument will have appeared long. It will not
have been too long if it has made clear to you with
what difficulties the attempt to give a detailed account
of the curious history of later Buddhism must at pre-
sent be beset. It has seemed to me far preferable, in
the few hours allotted to me, to discuss those parts of
Buddhism which are comparatively so certain, than to
occupy your time with such discussions as this one
about the Lalita Yistara, where the details are intri-
cate, and the result not only doubtful, but ajBPording
little ground for useful comparisons. I cannot but
think, indeed, that any useful discussions of any of the
numerous later forms of Buddhism will be impossible
till we arrive at an accurate understanding, a more
complete consensus of opinion, regarding the earliest
Buddhism. And I should not have touched upon the
literary questions discussed in the last few pages, had
it not seemed to me necessary to enter a protest against
the careless and much too common habit of using
works dating many centuries after the time of the
Buddha, as evidence of the opinions or the teachings
of Gotama himself.

INDIVIDUALITY. 205

I ■would now invite your attention to a fundamental
idea of early Buddhism, closely connected with the
doctrine of Karma, which want of time in the third
Lecture has compelled me to reserve for this last
Lecture.

You will have gathered from previous Lectures that
early Buddhism, so far as it was an ethical reformation,
propounded a rule of life divided into three great divi-
sions. There was a system of lower morality, intended
for those who still wished to remain in the world.
There was a second system, including the lower, but
going beyond it, for those who had entered the Order.
And there was the third, and highest, including both
the others, but going again beyond them, for those who
had entered what is called the Ariyo Atthangiko
Maggo, the Noble Eight-fold Path; that is to say,
the system of intellectual and moral self-culture and
self-control which culminated in Arahatship.

What we understand by morality is almost confined
to the lowest of the three. The desirability of aban-
doning the world, the consequences of having done so,
the pursuits with which the recluse should or should
not occupy himself, are considered in the second. Even
this second system, much stricter than the first, is called
" a mere trifle, only a lower thing," ^ as compared with

^ Brahmajala Sutta, i. 10.

206 INDIVIDUALITY.

the insiglit and freedom of the Arahat : and the dis-
ciple is not to be satisfied with having attained to this
lesser aim.^ The third consists, on the positive side,
of the Seven Jewels of the Law, enumerated in the
Book of the Great Decease; and on the negative,
of the fetters and veils and hindrances which the ear-
nest Buddhist has to break, to remove, and to over-
come.2 Incidentally, I have touched upon several
. parts of this system of the Noble Path in former Lec-
tures in this course, and you will recollect that its
result is the state of the man made perfect according to
the Buddhist faith, the state of Arahatship, one side of
which is Nirvana, that is, the extinction, in this life
and in this world, of craving thirst and of its conse-
sequences — lust, hatred, delusion and ignorance.

I would just notice, in passing, that it is craving
thirst, and not desire, which in the Arahat is said to

1 Book of the Great Decease, i. 7. Compare St. Paul in
Phil. iii. 13.

* A summary of the first, the lowest stage of Buddhist morality,
will be found given from the Sigalovada Sutta in my manual enti-
tled Buddhism, pp. 143 — 148. An outline of the second will be
found there, and again above in the Tevijja Sutta; and the third
Avill be fully treated of in the forthcoming work by Dr. Morris on
The Seven Jewels of the Law, See also, on Arahatship, my
Lecture on the "Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness,"
published in the Fortnightly Review, No. clvi. (and also separately) ;
the translation of the Sutta, so called, in my Buddhist Suttas
from the Pali (Oxford, 1881); and pp. 107—112 of my manual.
Buddhism (London, 1877).

INDIVIDUALITY. ' 207

be extinct. The second division of the Noble Eight-
fold Path is the cultivation of right desires. It is only
the evil desires, the grasping, selfish aims, which the
Arahat has to overcome ; and those, unfortunately too
numerous, writers who place Nirvana in the absence
of desire, are only showing thereby how exaggerated
is the importance which they attach to isolated pas-
sages and to careless translations.

But the point to which I would more especially
invite your attention is one referred to in the passage
I read last Tuesday from the Book of the Great De-
cease. Arahatship is essentially a condition of insight ;
and we found the insight of the Arahat there divided
into seven kinds — insight into impermanency, into
non-individuality, into corruption, into the danger of
evil-doing, into sanctification, into purity of heart, into
Nirvana. I am afraid that the mere reading of these
words conveys but very little insight into the meaning
which lies hidden beneath them. Each of them would
require at least a whole Lecture to bring out all its
original connotation, all that it suggested to a trained
Buddhist, and to take away from the ideas which it
now suggests to modern Christians all that is inevitably
imported into them from the Christian use of the words.
Any one present who is interested in practical ethics,
apart from creeds, will find these and the other various
details of Arahatship worth the trouble of looking into.
I can only propose here to say a few words on the first

208 INDIVIDUALITY.

two in this list. What do they mean ? Their names
are Anicca-sanna and Anatta-sanna, the percep-
tion of impermanency and of non-individuality. They
are the very first. Without them, the others cannot
exist, that is, cannot exist completely. Now it is
curious and noteworthy that the very first of the Saij-
yojanas, the Fetters which the disciple has to break
on the way to Arahatship, is also the doctrine of indi-
viduality (Atta-vada). It follows that we have to do
here with a belief the attainment of which is regarded
as of primary importance in the Buddhist system of
self-culture, or rather with a delusion whose existence
in the mind is regarded as incompatible with any
advance along the higher life.

And it is not by chance, not unadvisedly, that the
foundation of the higher life, the gate to the heaven
that is to be reached on earth, is placed, not in emotion,
not in feeling, but in knowledge, in the victory over
delusions. The moral progress of mankind depends on
the progress of knowledge ; the moral progress of the
individual depends, according to Buddhism, upon his
knowledge. Sin is folly. It is delusion that leads to
crime. Men used to slay their children, and children
their parents. They have grown out of that, and
require no special, no extraordinary personal wisdom
to abstain from murder and theft. A man ignorant
compared with his fellows may practise the Silas. But
to make any advance beyond the average standpoint,

INDIVIDUALITY. 209

he must get rid of delusions ; he must see things as
they are, in a way that ordinary people do not; he
must grasp ideas beyond the grasp of the average mind.
The fool, the dull man, can never be an Arahat. Docs
this sound very materialistic, very hard? There is
many a man, foolish and dull enough in the world's
estimation, who gains but little money, and who earns
but little social success, whose eyes are nevertheless
open to things beyond the ken of the man successful
in the world through a hardness of mind that is incom-
patible with the humility of faith. The dullness which
prevents the attainment of Arahatship is not what the
world calls dullness ; and it often blinds the eyes of
the cleverest, the most successful among men. The
Euddhist doctrine of the necessity of insight was an
encouragement, not a warning, to the poor in spirit;
and it has analogies very close and very real with St.
Paul's doctrine of justification by faith.

But what is this insight which is the entrance to
Arahatship ? To appreciate the question, we must go
back, as usual, to the early Upanishads. The know-
ledge which in those writings is praised, with a con-
stant reiteration, as the highest of all gifts, the birth-
place, the source, of abiding salvation, is the knowledge
of the identity between the individual and God, in
whom and by whom the individual lives, and moves,
and has his being. As for example :

" He is my self within the heart, smaller than a corn

P

210 INmVIDUALITY.

<'of rice, smaller than a barley-corn, smaller than a
"mustard-seed, smaller than a canary-seed — yea, than
" the kernel of a canary-seed ! He also is my self
'' within the heart, greater than the earth, greater than
" the sky, greater than heaven, greater than all these
''worlds. He from whom all works, all desires, all
"sweet odours and tastes proceed, who embraces all
"this, who never speaks and is never surprised, he,
"my self within the heart, is that Brahman."^ And
again :

" What I (the worshipper) am, that is he. What
"he is, that am I. This has been said by a Eishi:
" ' The sun is the self of all that moves and rests.' Let
"him look to that. Let him look to that."^

Such knowledge is better, according to the Upani-
shads, than all works, than all rituals. The possession
of it is their justification by faith. The ever-present
sense of union with God inspires their deepest poetry,
and must have given a tone to the life of not a few of
those ancient thinkers.

How, then, did Gotama deal with this idea? We
have the answer in the two perceptions that are the be-
ginning of the insight, the mental grasp of the Arahat.

The first is impermanency. The Arahat must tho-
roughly realize, first of all, that all things, all beings,
are impermanent. To the peasant, the huge mountain

^ Chandogya Upanishad, iii. 14.

' Aitareya Arauyaka, ii. 2, 4, quoting Rig Yeda, i. 115, 7.

INDIVIDUALITY. 211

of the Himalaya range, at the foot of which he tills
his tiny field, seems fixed, and sure, and lasting. The
Arahat must see through this delusion. The great
mountain, and the broad earth on which it rests, must
convey to his mind no such impression. To him, it
must seem, as it really is, a changing, variable, imper-
manent, unstable thing, whose existence, compared
with the long ages of the revolving Kappas (the asons
of the world's renovation and dissolution), is only for
a day. And he must not harbour in the remotest
cranny of his mind^ a single exception to this invariable
rule. To him, no outward form, no compound thing,
no creature, no creator, no existence of any kind, must
appear to be other than a temporary collocation of its
component parts, fated inevitably to be dissolved. And
the glamour of the Vedic poetry must not deceive him,
the beauty of the figurative language of the Upanishads
must not mislead him. The gods are but beings, living
under brighter, happier conditions than men. They,
too, have forms, invisible to mortal ken ; they, too, are
compound things, like everything else. Their heavens
will be rolled up as a garment, and they themselves
shall be dissolved.

But is there not inside the spirit form of the gods,

inside the bodily form of men and beasts, some abiding

principle, some self, that survives the dissolution of

its case, its sheath, and is itself impermanent? The

* Compare Buddhist Birth Stories, p, 253.

p2

212 INDIVIDUALITY.

answer of Buddhism is not only that the idea is a delu-
sion, sprung from the impressions received through
the five senses, but that this delusion prevents the
attainment of full height in the Buddhist scale of right-
eousness, is the very first thing to be got rid of by any
person who wishes to reach up to anything beyond the
ordinary morality of man to man.

Perhaps the most frequently quoted and most popular
verses in Pali Buddhist books are these :
" How transient are all component things !
Growth is their nature and decay :
They are produced, they are dissolved again :
And then is best, — when they have sunk to rest !"^

And they are explained by an orthodox commentator
as follows :

"In these verses the words, 'How transient are
"'all component things!' mean, 'Dear lady Sub-
" 'hadda, wheresoever and by whatsoever causes made
"'or come together, compounds, ^ — that is, all those
" ' things which possess the essential constituents (whe-
" ' thermaterial or mental) of existing things,^ — all these
'* ' compounds are impermanence itself. For of these,
"'form^ is impermanent, reason^ is impermanent,

1 The last clause is literally, " Blessed is their cessation," where
the word for cessation, upasamo, is derived from the Avord sam,
" to be calm, to be quiet," and means cessation by sinking into rest.

2 Saijkhara. ^ Khandayatanadayo.
* Riipar). ' Vinnanar].

INDIVIDUALITY. 213

(( i

the (mental) eye^ is impermanent, and qualities^
" ' are impermanent. And whatever treasure there be,
" ' whether conscious or unconscious, that is transitory.
" ' Understand, therefore, ' How transient are all com-
" ' ponent things !'

"And why? 'Growth is their nature and
" ' decay.' These, all, have the inherent quality of
" coming into (individual) existence, and have also the
''inherent quality of growing old; or (in other words)
" their very nature is to come into existence and to be
"broken up. Therefore should it be understood that
" they are impermanent.

"And since they are impermanent, when 'they
'"are produced, they are dissolved again.'
" Having come into existence, having reached a state,^
" they are surely dissolved. For all these things come
"into existence, taking an individual form, and are
"dissolved, being broken up. To them, as soon as
"there is birth, there is what is called a state; as
"soon as there is a state, there is what is called dis-
" integration.* For to the unborn there is no such
"thing as state, and there is no such thing as a state
"which is without disintegration. Thus are all com-
" pounds, having attained to the three characteristic
"marks (of impermanency, pain, and want of any

1 KakkhuT). ^ Dhamma.

3 Thiti. * Bhaijgo.

214 INDIVIDUALITY.

"abiding principle),^ subject, in this way and in tbat
"way, to dissolution. All these component things,
"therefore, without exception, are impermanent, mo-
"mentary,^ despicable, unstable, disintegrating, trem-
"bling, quaking, uulasting, sure to depart,^ only for a
"time,^ and without substance; — as temporary^ as a
"phantom, as the mirage, or as foam !"

Euddhism sees no distinction of any fundamental
character, no difference, except an accidental or phe-
nomenal difference, between gods, men, plants, animals
and things. All are the product of causes that have been
acting during the immeasurable ages of the past ; and
all will be dissolved. Of sentient beings, as we have
seen in the third Lecture, nothing will survive save
the result of their actions ; and he who believes, who
hopes, in anything else, will be blinded, hindered,
hampered in his religious growth by the most fatal of
delusions.

Is it not interesting, is it not strange, that this
should be the teaching of the religion which numbers

^ Aneccar), dukkliarj, anattar). See Jataka, i. 275; and, on
the last, Mahaparinibbana Sutta, i. 10, and Malia Vagga, i vi,
38—47.

2 Kbanika. See Oldenberg's note on Dipavamsa, i. 53.

3 Payata, literally "departed." The forms payati and payato,
given by Childers, should be corrected into payati and payato
See Jataka, i. 146.

* Tavakalikii. See Jataka, i. 121, -where the word is used of
a cart let out on hire for a time only.

INDIVIDUALITY. 215

more adherents than any other religion which has
appeared upon the earth ? To us it seems devoid of
hope. Is it really so ? Must we have a belief in some
personal happiness that we ourselves are to enjoy here-
after ? Is it not enough to hope that our self-denials
and our struggles will add to the happiness of others ?
Surely we have even so a gain far beyond our deserts ;
for we receive more, infinitely more, than we can ever
give. We inherit the result of the Karma of the count-
less multitudes who have lived and died, who have
struggled and suffered, in the long ages of the past.
And if we can sometimes catch a glimpse of the glories
that certainly lie hid behind the veil of the infinite
future, is not that enough, and more than enough, to
fill our hearts with an abiding faith and hope stronger,
deeper, truer, than any selfishness can give ?

I do not know. But there is at least a poetry and
a beauty in these things that may open our eyes a
little to things we know not of, that may invite us to
look into these matters a little further. We can at least
rejoice that the cultivated world is beginning to enter
upon the fruits of Oriental research in Indian matters,
and that the habit of Western historians of considering
all things at any distance from the basin of the Medi-
terranean as beneath notice, and of thus practically
ignoring the existence of about two-thirds of the human
race, is beginning to be broken through. It would be
useless to attempt to predict the measure of the influ*

216 INDIVIDUALITY.

ence which this change of standpoint will eventually have
upon our ideas of history : but it may be compared to the
results which followed inevitably on the discovery that
this earth was not the centre of the universe. And
when we call to mind how closely intertwined are
religious with historical beliefs and arguments, we may
realize in some degree what effect may follow upon the
unveiling of a long history of civilization, independent
of Egyptian, Jewish or Greek thought ; upon the cur-
tain being drawn back from a new drama of struggling
races and rival religions, filled with ideas strangely
familiar and as curiously strange. It is not too much
to say that a lyfew World has been once more disco-
vered by adventurers as persevering as Columbus, and
perhaps at present earning as little gratitude as he did
from his contemporaries ; and that the inhabitants of
the Old World cannot, if they would, go back again
to the quiet times when the New World was not,
because it was unknown. Every one to whom the
entrancing story of man's gradual rise and progress
has charms peculiarly its own, will welcome the new
light; others will have to face the new facts, and
find room for them in their conceptions of the world's
history — that history which is the Epic of Humanity.
Happy are we if the strains of that epic are ever
ringing in our ears, if the spirit of that epic is ever
ruling in our hearts ! An abiding sense of the long
past whose beginnings are beyond imagination, and of

INDIVIDUALITY. 217

the long future whose end we cannot realize, may fill
us indeed with a knowledge of our own insignificance
— the bubbles on the stream which flash into light for
a moment and are seen no more. But it will perhaps
bring us nearer to a sense of the Infinite than man in
his clearest moments, in his deepest moods, can ever
otherwise hope to reach. It will enable us to appre-
ciate what is meant by the Solidarity of Man, and will
fill us with an overpowering awe and wonder at the
immensity of that series of which we arc but a few of
the tiny links. And the knowledge of what man has
been in distant times, in far-off lands, under the influ-
ence of ideas which at first sight seem to us so strange,
will strengthen within us that reverence, sympathy,
and love, which must follow on a realization of the
mysterious complexity of being — past, present, and to
come — that is wrapt up in every human life

APPEI^BIX

APPENDIX I.

Speech in Parliament in 1530 on comparing Eeligions in order to
discover Truth, referred to above, pp. 4 — 6.

The speech referred to in the first Lecture was first pointed out
to me in Cobbett's Parliamentary History, Vol. i. p. 503, by my
friend Mr. Allanson Picton. It is there taken word for word from
an older and anonymous work, now rare, entitled, " The Parliamen

" tary or Constitutional History of England by several Hands,"

of which the second edition appeared in 1762. The speech is so
interesting that I need make no apology for quoting it in full, with
the context. The passage occurs in Vol. iii. of the earlier work,
pp. 57 and foil.

" Many Abuses which the Laity received daily from the Clergy
" were loudly complained of ; and the King, being now willing that
*' they should be strictly inquired into, referred the Eedress thereof
*' to the Commons in the Parliament. Complaints also being made
" in that House^ against exactions for Probates of Testimonies and
"Mortuaries; for Pluralities, Non-residence, and against Priests
"that were Farmers of Lands, Tanners, Woolbuyers, &c., the Spi-
" rituality were much offended at these Proceedings ; and when the
"Bills for regulating these Exorbitances were brought before the
" House of Lords, John Fisher, Bishop of Eochester, made a remark-
" able Speech against them. As the Design of these Inquiries is to
" preserve an exact Impartiality, we shall give this Speech verbatim ;

^ These Complaints were drawn up into six Articles, and are in Fox's Acts
and Monuments, Vol. ii. p. 907 (edit. 1595).

999

UNIVERSALITY OF BELIEF

** as it is printed in a small Treatise on the Life and Death of that
«« Prelate. 1

" ' My Lords,

" * Here are certain Bills exhibited against the Clergy, wherein

" * there are Complaints made against the Viciousness, Idleness,

" ' Eapacity, and Cruelty of Bishops, Abbots, Priests, and their

*' ' Officials. But, my Lords, are all vicious, all idle, all ravenous

"'and cruel Priests, or Bishops? And, for such as are such, are

'* * there not Laws provided already again.st such ? Is there any

" * Abuse that we do not seek to rectify ? Or, can there be such a

" ' Eectification as that there shall be no Abuses ? Or, are not Cler-

" ' gymen to rectify the Abuses of the Clergy ? Or, shall men find

'* ' Fault with other Mens Manners, while they forget their own j

" ' and punish where they have no Authority to correct ? If we be

" ' not executive in our Laws, let each Man suffer Delinquency ; or,

" * if we have not PoAver, aid us with your Assistance, and we shall

" < give you Thanks, But, my Lords, I hear there is a Motion made,

" ' that the small Monasteries should be given up into the King's

" ' Hands, which makes me fear that it is not so much the Good as

" * the Goods of the Church that is looked after. Truly, my Lords,

♦"how this may sound in your Ears I cannot tell, but to me it

*' ' appears no otherwise, than as if our Holy Mother the Church

" ' were to hecome a Bondmaid, and now broiight into Servility and

" ' Thraldom ; and, by little and little, to be quite banished out of

"'those Dwelling-Places, which the Piety and Liberality of oiir

" * Forefathers, as most bountiful Benefactors, have conferred upon

" ' her. Otherwise, to what tendeth these portentous and curious

" ' Petitions from the Commons 1 To no other Intent or Purpose,

" ' but to bring the Clergy in Contempt with the Laity, that they

" ' may seize their Patrimony. But, my Lords, beware of yourselves

" ' and your Country ; beware of your Holy Mother the Catholic

"'Church; the People are subject to Novelties, and Lutheranism

1 The Life and Death of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, &c., by
Pr. Thos. Bailey (12mo, London, 1655; rei^rinted, 1739).

AS TEST OF TRUTH. 22

o

" ' spreads itself amongst us. Remember Germany and Bohemia,
" ' what l\Iiseries are befallen them already, and let our Neighbours
*' ' Houses that are now on Fire teach us to beware of our own
" ' Disasters. Wherefore, my Lords, I will tell you plainly what I
" ' think ; that, except ye resist manfully, by your Authorities, tliis
" * violent Heap of Mischiefs offered by the Commons, you shall see
"'all Obedience first drawn from the Clergy, and secondly from
" ' yourselves ; and if you search into the true Causes of all these
" ' Mischiefs which reign amongst them, you shall find that they all
*• ' arise through Want of Faith.'

"The same Authority ^ tells us, that this Speech pleased or
" displeased several of the House of Lords, as they were diversly
" inclined to forward or flatter the King's Designs. But, amongst
" them all, none made a Eeply to it but only the Duke of Norfolk,
" who said to the Bishop,

" ' My Lord of Rocliester, Many of these Words might have been
'"well spared; but I wist it is often seen that the greatest Clerks
" ' are not always the wisest men.'
" To which the Bishop replied :

" ' My Lord, I do not remember any Fools in my Time that ever
'"proved great Clerks.'

" When the Lower House beard of this Speech, they conceived
"so great Indignation against the Bishop that they immediately
" sent their Speaker, Audley, attended with a Number of the Mem-
" bers, to complain of it to the King ; and to let his Majesty know
'"how grievously they thought themselves injured thereby, for
" ' charging them with Lack of Faith, as if they had been Lifidels
"'or Heretics, &c.'

"To satisfy the Commons, the King sent for the Bishop of
" Rochester to come before him ; when, being present, the King
" demanded of him, why he spoke in such a Manner ] The Prelate
" answered, ' That, being in Parliament, he spake his Mind freely in
" 'Defence of the Church, which he saw daily injured and oppressed

* Tlie above-mentioned Life of Fisher.

224 UNIVERSALITY OF BELIEF

"*by the common People, whose Office it was not to Judge of her
" ' Manners, much less to reform them ; and therefore, he said, he
" * thought himself in Conscience bound to defend her in all that
" ' lay within his Power.' However, the King advised him ' to use
"'his Words more temperately another Time,' which was all ha
" then said to him.

" But the Injury the Commons thought they had received, by this
"reflection, was not so easily digested; for one of the Members,
" making Use of the Gospel Doctrine so far, says the Noble Histo-
" rian,^ as to take a reasonable Liberty to Judge of Things, and
" being piqued at the Bishop for laying it all on Want of Faith,
"stood up in that House, and spoke to this eflfect :
" ' Mr. Speaker,

" * If none else but the Bishop of Kochester, or his Adherents,
" ' did hold this Language, it would less trouble me ; but since so
" ' many religious and different Sects, now conspicuous in the whole
" ' World, do not only vindicate unto themselves the Name of the
"'true Church, but labour betwixt Invitations and Threats, for
"'nothing more than to make us resign our Faith to a simple
" ' Obedience, I shall crave Leave to propose what I think fit in this
" ' Case for us Laiques and Secular Persons to do ; not that I will
" ' make my Opinion any Paile to others, when any better Expedient
" ' shall be offered, but that I would be glad we considered hereof,
" ' as the greatest Affair that doth or may concern us.

" * For if, in all human Actions, it be hard to find that Medium,
" ' or even Temper, which may keep us from declining into Extremes,
" 'it will be much more difficult in religious Worship ; both as the
" ' Path is supposed narrower, and the Precipices more dangerous
" ' on every side. And because each Man is created by God a free
" * Citizen of the World, and obliged to nothing so much as the
" ' Inquiry of those Means by which he may attain his everlasting
" ' Happiness, it will be fit to examine to whose Tuition and Conduct
* * he commits himself. For as several Teachers not only differing

* Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII., p. 295.

AS TEST OF TRUTH. 225

" *in Language, Habit, and Ceremony, or at least in some of these,
"'but peremptory and opposite in their Doctrines, present them-
"* selves, much Circumspection must be used: Here then, taking
" * his Prospect, he shall find these Guides directing him to several
" ' "Ways, whereof the first extends no further than to the Laws and
" ' Religions of each Man's native Soil or Diocese, without pass-
" ' ing those Bounds. The second, reaching much further, branches
"'itself into that Diversity of Religions and Philosophies, that not
" ' only are, but have been extant in former Times, untill he be able
"*to determine which is best. But, in either of these, no little
"'Difficulties will occur : For, if each Man ought to be secure of all
" * that is taught at home, without inquiring further, how can he
"'answer his Conscience? When looking abroad, the Terrors of
" * everlasting Damnation shall be denounced on him, by the several
" ' Hierarches and visible Churches of the World, if he believes any
"'Doctrine but theirs. And that, amongst these again, such able
" 'and understanding Persons may be found, as in all other Affairs
" ' will equal his Teachers. Will it be fit that he believe God hath
" ' inspired his own Church and Religion only, and deserted the rest,
" ' Avheu yet Mankind is so much of one Offspring, that it hath not
" ' only the same Pater Communis in God, but is come all from the
'"same carnal Ancestors? Shall each Man, without more Exami-
"' nation, believe his Priests in what Religion soever; and, when
" 'he hath done, call their Doctrine his Faith ? On the other Side,
" ' if he must argue Controversies before he can be satisfied, how
" ' much Leisure must he obtain ? How much Wealth and Substance
" ' must he consume ? How many Languages must he learn ? And
" ' how many Authors must he read ? How many Ages must he
" ' look into ? How many Faiths must he examine ? How many
" ' Expositions must he confer, and how many Countries must he
" ' wander into, and how many Dangers must he run ? Briefly,
" ' would not our Life, on these Terms, be a perpetual Peregrination,
" ' while each j\Ian posted into the other's Country to learn the Way
" ' to Heaven, without yet that he could say at last he had known
" ' or tried all ? What remains then to be done ? Must he take all

Q

226 UNIVERSALITY OF BELIEF

" 'that each Priest, upon Pretence of Inspiration, would teach him,
** ' because it might be so ; or may he leave all, because it might be
* otlierwise 1 Certainly, to embrace all Keligions, according to
" ' their various and repugnant Rites, Tenets, Traditions, and Faiths,
" ' is impossible, when yet in one Age it were not possible, after
*' ' incredible Pains and Expences, to learn out and number them.
' ' On the other Side, to reject all Religions indifferently is as impious,
" * there being no Nation that in some Kind or other doth not
"'worship God, so that there will be a Necessity to distinguish.
" 'Not yet that any Man will be able, upon Comparison, to discern
" ' which is the perfectest among the many professed in the whole
" ' World, each of them being of that large Extent, that no Man's
'"Understanding will serve to comprehend it in its uttermost
" ' Latitude and Signification : But, at least, that every Man might
" ' vindicate and sever, in his particular Religion, the more essential
'"and demonstrative Parts from the rest, without being moved so
" * much at the Threats and Promises of any other Religion that
" * would make him obnoxious, as to depart from this Way, there
" ' being no ordinary Method so intelligible, ready, and compendious,
" ' for conducting each Man to his desired End. Having thus there-
" ' fore recollected himself, and together implored the Assistance of
" ' that Supreme God whom all Nations acknowledge, he must labour,
" ' in the next place, to find out what inward Means his Providence
" ' hath delivered to discern the true not only from the false, but
" ' even from the likely and possible, each of them requiring a pecu-
'"liar Scrutiny and Consideration: Neither shall he fly thus to
♦"particular Reason, which may soon lead him to Heresy; but,
" • after a due Seperation of the more doubtful and controverted
" ' Parts, shall hold himself to common, authentic, and universal
" ' Truths, and consequently inform himself, what in the several
" ' Articles proposed to him is so taught, as it is first written in
'"the Heart, and together delivered in all the Laws and Religions
" ' he can hear of in the whole World : This certainly can never
•' * deceive him, since therein he shall find out how far the Impres-
•' ' sions of God's Wisdom and Goodness are extant in all Mankind,

AS TEST OF TRUTH. 227

" * and to what Degrees his universal Providence hath dilated itself ;
" * while thus ascending to God by the same Steps he descends to
" ' us, he cannot fail to encounter the Divine INIajesty.

" ' Neither ought it to trouble him if he finds these Truths
'"variously complicated with Difficulties or Errors; since, without
" ' insisting on more Points than what are clearly agreed on every
" ' Side, it will be his Part to reduce them into Method and Order ;
" ' which also is not hard, they being but few, and apt to C«nnec-
*• ' tion : So that it wiU concern our several Teachers to initiate ' us
" ' in this Doctrine, before they come to any particular Direction f
" * lest otherwise they do like those who would persuade us to
" ' renounce Daylight to study only by their Candle. It will be
" ' worth the Labour, assuredly, to inquire how far these universal
" ' Notions will guide us, before we commit ourselves to any of their
" ' abstruse and scholastic Mysteries, or supernatural and private
"'Revelations; not yet but that they also may challenge a just
" ' Place in our Belief, when they are delivered upon warrantable
" ' Testimony ; but that they cannot be understood as so indifferent
" ' and infallible Prmciples for the Instruction of all Mankind.

" ' Thus, among many supposed inferior and questionable Deities
" ' worshipped in the four Quarters of the World, we shall find one
" ' Chief so taught us, as above others to be highly reverenced.

" ' Among many Rites, Ceremonies, Volumes, &c., delivered us
" 'as Instruments or Parts of his Worship, he shall find Virtue so
" ' eminent, as it alone concludes and sums up the rest. Insomuch
" ' as there is no Sacrament Avhich is not finally resolved into it ;
" ' good Life, Charity, Faith in, and Love of, God, being such
" ' necessary and essential Parts of Religion, that all the rest are
" ' finally closed and determined in them.

" ' Among the many Expirations, Lustrations, and Propitiations
" ' for our Sins, taught in the several Quarters of the World in
" ' sundry Times, we shall find that none doth avail without hearty
" ' Sorrow for our Sins, and a true Repentance towards God, whom
" ' we have offended,

"•And, lastly, amidst the divers Places and Manners of Reward

^ Sic lege for imitate. ^ Query, lege doctrine.

q2

228 UNIVERSALITY OF BELIEF.

'and Pmiisliment, which former Ages hath delivered, we shall
'find God's Justice and Mercy not so limited, but that he can
'extend either of them even beyond Death, and consequently
' recompense or chastise eternally.

" ' These, therefore, as universal and undoubted Truths, should,
' in my Opinion, be first received ; they will at least keep us from
' Impiety and Atheism, and together lay a Foundation for God's
' Service and the Hope of a better Life : Besides, it will reduce
' Men's ]\Tinds from uncertain and controverted Points, to a solid
' Practice of Virtue ; or, when we fall from it, to an unfeigned
' Kepentance and Purpose, thro' God's Grace, to amend our sinful
'Life, without making Pardon so easy, cheap, or mercenary as
' some of them do. Lastly, it will dispose us to a General Concord
' and Peace ; for, when we are agreed concerning the eternal Causes
' and Means of our Salvation, why should we so much differ for
' the rest ? Since as these Principles exclude nothing of Faith or
'Tradition, in what Age or Manner soever it intervened, each
' Nation may be permitted the Belief of any pious Miracle that
' conduceth to God's Glory ; without that, on this Occasion, we

* need to scandalize or offend each other. The Common Truths

* in Eeligion, formerly mentioned, being firmer Bonds of Unity,
' than that any Thing emergent out of Traditions, whether written
'or unwritten, should dissolve them; let us therefore establish
' and fix these Catholic or universal Notions ; they will not hinder

* us to believe what soever else is faithfully taught upon the Autho-
'rity of the Church. So that whether the Eastern, Western,
' Northern, or Southern Teachers, &c,, and particularly whether
'my Lord of Rochester, Luther, Eccius, Zuinglius, Erasmus,
' Melancthon, &c., be in the Eight, we Laiques may so build upon
' these Catholic and infallible Grounds of Religion, as whatsoever

* Superstructures of Faith be raised, these Foundations yet may

* support them.'
" This Speech was differently taken also by those who were still

Friends or Enemies to the Church of Rome, However, the Majo-
rity being of the latter Opinion, a Reformation in Religion was
resolved upon, as far as was consistent with the established Laws
of the Kingdom.*

APPENDIX 11.

Eeligious Liberty and Toleration as held by tbe early Buddhists.

In support of the allegation in the note to p. 4, I annex here some
passages which illustrate the views on respect for the opinions of
others held generally by Buddhists ahout two thousand years before
religious liberty was advocated by isolated thinkers in Europe.

1. Brahma-jala Sutta.

The following words are placed, at the commencement of the
Sutta, in the mouth of Gotama. The Sutta is the first in the
Digha Nikaya, and is probably one of the very oldest statements of
the Buddhist Dhamma, or Doctrine, now extant. It is still much
read, and very popular among the orthodox Buddhists.

" Should those who are not with us, 0 Bhikkhus, speak in dis-
" praise of me, or of the Dhamma, or of the Saijgha, you are not on
"that account to give way to anger, heartburning or discontent,
" Should those who are not with us, O Bhikkhus, speak in dispraise
*' of me, or of the Dhamma, or of the Saggha, if you were on that
"account to be either enraged or displeased, it is you (not they)
" upon whom the danger would fall ; for would you then be able to
" discriminate whether what they had spoken was right or wroug ?'

" Not so. Lord !" was the reply.

" Should people so speak, 0 Bhikkhus, you should explain any-
" thing incorrect in what is said as being incorrect, and should say
" ' This is not correct : this is not so : this exists not among us, is
" ' not found in us !' "

230 EELIGIOUS LIBERTY AS HELD

2. Asoka's Seventh Edict.

On Asoka's inscriptions it is sufficient to refer the reader to
M. Senart's important work, entitled, Les Inscriptions de
Piyadasi, where all the former authorities are quoted. The
seventli Edict runs as follows :

" King Piyadasi, beloved of the gods, desires that all the sects
" should dwell (at liberty) in all places. They all indeed seek
" (equally) after the subjugation (of one's self) and purity of heart :
"though the people are fickle in their aims and fickle in their
"attachments. They may pursue, either in part or in whole, the
" aim they set before them. And let every one, whether he receive
" abundant alms or not, have .self-control, purity of heart, thankful-
"ness, and firmness of love. That is always excellent."

3. Asoka's Twelfth Edict.

"King Piyadasi, beloved of the gods, honours all sects, both
" recluses and laymen : he honours them with gifts and with every
" kind of honour. But the beloved of the gods attaches not so much
" weight to alms and honours as to (the desire) that the good name
" and (the moral virtues which are) the essential part of the teaching
" of all sects may increase. Now the prosperity of this essential part
" of the teaching of all the sects (involves), it is true, great diversity.
" But this is the one foundation of all, (that is to say) moderation
" in speech ; that there should be no praising of one's own sect and
" decrying of other sects ;• that there should be no depreciation (of
" others) without cause, but, on the contrary, a rendering of honour
" to other sects for Avhatever cause honour is due. By so doing,
"both one's own sect will be helped forwaid, and other sects will
" be benefited ; by acting otherwise, one's own sect will be destroyed
"in injuring others. Whosoever exalts his own sect by decrying
" others, does so doubtless out of love for his own sect, thinking to
"spread abroad the fame thereof. But, on the contrary, he infiicts
"the more an injury upon his own sect. Therefore is concord the
"best, in that all should hear, and love to hear, the doctrines

BY THE EARLY BUDDHISTS. 231

" (Dhamma) of each other. Thus is it the desire of the beloved of
*' the gods that every sect should he well instructed, and should
*' (profess) a religion that is lovely. So that all, whatever their
*' belief, should be persuaded that the beloved of the gods attaches
"less weight to alms and to honours than to the desire that the
"good name, and the moral virtues which are the essential part of
" the teaching of all sects, may increase. To this end do the minis-
" ters of religion everywhere strive, and the officers placed over
" women, and the inspectors, and the other officials. And this is
"the fruit thereof; namely, the prosperity of his own sect and the
" exaltation of religion generally."

There is no record known to me in the whole of the long history
of Buddhism, throughout the many countries where its followers
have been for such lengthened periods supreme, of any persecution
by the Buddhists of the followers of any other faith.

APPENDIX III.

PALI TEXT SOCIETY.

COMMITTEE OF MANAGEMENT.

Eon. Treasurer — W. W. Honter, Esq., CLE., LL.D.
Eon. Secretary— \i. B. Brodribb, Esq., B.A., 3, Brick Court, Temple, E.O.

Professor Fausboll. Dr. Morris.

Dr. Oldknberq. M. Emile Senart.

T. W. Rhys Davids, Chairman.
{With power to add workers to their number.)

Bankers— Lonvos Joint-Stock Bank, Princes Street, E.G.

A Pali Text Society has been started on the model of the Early
English Text Society, in order to render accessible to students the
rich stores of the earliest Buddhist literature now lying unedited
and practically unused in the various MSS. scattered throughout
the Public and University Libraries of Europe.

The historical importance of these Texts can scarcely be exagge-
rated, either in respect of their value for the history of folk-lore, or
of religion, or of language. It is already certain that they were all
put into their present form within a very limited period, probably
extending to less than a century and a half (about B.C. 400 — 250).
For that period they have preserved for us a record, quite uncontarai-
nated by any outside influence, of the every-day beliefs and customs
of a people nearly related to ourselves, just as they were passing
through the first stages of civilization. They are our best authorities
for the early history of that interesting system of religion so nearly
allied to some of the latest speculations among ourselves, and which

THE PALI TEXT SOCIETY. 233

has influenced so powerfully, and for so long a time, so groat a por-
tion of the human race— the system of religion which we now call
]>uddhism. And in the history of speech they contain unimpeachable
evidence of a stage in language midway between the Vedic Sanskrit
and the various modern forms of speech in India. The sacred books
of the early Buddhists have preserved to us the sole record of the
only religious movement in the world's history which bears any close
resemblance to early Christianity ; and it is not too much to say
that the publication of this unique literature Avill be no less impor-
tant for the study of history, and especially of religious history, than
the publication of the Vedas has already been.

When we call to mind the passionate patience with which well-
worn and less important studies are pursued among us, it is matter
for wonder that a nearly unworked mine, where the nuggets of gold
can still be gathered on the surface, should thus far have remained
neglected. But there is no endowment of lesearch among us. The
well-worn studies afford the means of livelihood ; and scholars may
well be excused for preferrirg work that brings immediate reward,
to embarking in difficult and untried undertakings. There has also
been hitherto a want of reliable MSS. in Europe from which to
edit Pali texts. But this difficulty is now very nearly overcome ;
and during the last few years the number of scholars who have
turned their attention to Pali has considerably increased.

The Society can now therefore look forward to publishing, within
a no very distant period, the whole of the texts of the Sutta and
Abhidhamma Pitakas. Professor FausboU having completed the
Dhammapada, is already far advanced with his edition of the Jataka
Book, the longest of the texts of the Sutta Pitaka ; and Dr. Olden-
berg has the Yinaya Pitaka well in hand. The remaining texts of
the Pitakas lend themselves easily to distribution among various
editors. The project has been most heartily welcomed by scholars
throughout Europe; and Professor Fausboll and Dr. Oldenberg
(when their present undertakings are completed), Dr. Morris, Dr.
Trenckner, Dr. Thiessen, Dr. Frankfurter, Dr. Hultsch, Professor
Ernst Kuhn, Professor Pischel, Dr. Edward Miiller, Professor Win-

234 THE PALI TEXT SOCIETY.

disch, Professor H, Jacobi, M. Leon Feer, M. Senart, Professor
Kern, Professor Lanman, and Mr. Ehys Davids, have already
pledged themselves to take part in the undertaking.

It is proposed to include in the Society's series those of the more
important of the earlier Jain and uncanonical Buddhist texts which
may be expected to throw light on the religious movement out of
which the Pitakas also arose.

Analyses in English of the published Texts, Introductions to
them, Catalogues of MSS,, Indices, Glossaries, and Notes and
Queries on early Buddhist History, will appear from time to time
in the Society's Journal.

Later on, the Society hope also to publish Translations of all
the texts not elsewhere translated. But the series of translations
from the Sacred Books of the East, now being published at Oxford
under the editorship of Professor Max Miiller, has already found
room for a version of the greater part of the Vinaya Pitaka, and will
find room for others. The Society desires to be strictly subservient
to that series, and will only deal, in the way of translation, with those
books which do not appear in the Sacred Books of the East.

The twenty-six books of the Sutta and Abhidhamma Pitakas are
written in the Ceylon manuscripts on about 4000 palm-leaves. The
Vinaya Pitaka, as edited by Dr. Oldenberg, will be printed on about
1600 pages 8vo, and it occupies about 900 similar palm-leaves. About
7000 pages 8vo ought therefore to be sufficient for the whole of the
work ; and the cost of printing this quantity of Pali text in Eoman
characters will be about £1750.

It is proposed to raise the sum in two ways. In the first place,
the Subscription to the Society will be One Guinea a year, or Five
Guineas for six years, due in advance. No charge will be made for
postage ; and this payment will entitle the subscriber to a copy of
all those publications of the Society published during the year for
which he subscribes. In the second place, it is hoped that persons
who are desirous to aid the objects of the Society and who do not
require to receive its publications, will give Donations, to be
spread, if necessary, over a term of years. Though the Society

THE PALI TEXT SOCIETY. 235

has only just been started, a very encouraging number of sub-
scribers have already come forward, including many of the leading
Orientalists and University Libraries in Europe ; and this number
will doubtless increase as the Society becomes better known. But
although enough funds are already in hand to enable the Society
to go to press with the first volume (which will appear early next
year), it cannot hope to be able to depend entirely upon subscrip-
tions. A number of donations, varying in amount from five to a
hundred pounds, have already been paid or promised ; but about
£900 more, reckoning each present subscription at ten years' value,
will be required if the undertaking is to be carried out to a suc-
cessful accomplishment. Seeing that the distinguished scholars
whose names appear in the above list are willing to work without
pecuniary reward of any kind, it would be nothing less than a dis-
grace if such an object were allowed to fall through, in so wealthy
a country as England, for so small an amount.

As the price to non-subscribers will be about double the amount
of the subscription, all intending subscribers are requested to send
their subscription at once to the Honorary Secretary, with whom
intending donors are respectfully urged to communicate without
delay. Bis dat qui cito dat.

The following gentlemen have kindly consented to act as agents

for the receipt of subscriptions :

Berlin — Professor Oldenbkrg (Genthiner Strasse, No. 38).

Faris — M. Ernest Leroux (Rue Bonaparte, No. 28).

Ceylon — E. R. Ghnakatna, Esq. (Attapattu Mudaliyar, Galle).

Burma — J. A. Bryce, Esq. (or in his absence, Henry Maxwell, Esq.), Rangoon.

Siam — Henry Alabaster, Esq., Bangkok.

America — Professor Lanman, Harvard University.

The principal contents of the first volume will be selected from

the Thera- and Theri-gatha by Prof. Oldenberg, the Acaranga

Sutta by Prof. Jacobi, the Miila- and Khudda-sikkha by Dr.

Edward Mliller, the Digha Nikaya by Dr. Morris and Mr. Rhys

Davids, and the Anguttara Nikaya by Dr. Morris. Prof. Win-

disch has undertaken the Itivuttakar), Prof. Kern the Jataka-

mala, and Prof. Lanman the Visuddhi-magga.

APPENDIX ly.

Eeferences to Ee-birth as an Animal in the Pali Suttaa.

In the Book of the Great Decease, i. 8, 9, 10, Gotaraa is said to
have described to Ananda a so-called Mirror of Truth, which, if an
elect disciple possess, he can predict of himself that re-birth as an
animal, or as a ghost, or in any place of woe, is rendered impossible
for him. The Mirror of Truth is consciousness of faith in the
Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Saijgha ; and the whole doctrine is
allied to the Christian doctrine of the final perseverance of the
saints.

The Panca-gatiyo, or Five States into which the unconverted
man can be re-born, are purgatory, the animal kingdom, and the
condition of ghosts, gods and men. These Five States are referred
to in several passages of the Suttas.

In the first Vagga or Chapter of the Sotapatti-saijyutta of the
Saqyutta Nikaya occurs the following passage :

" What though a king of kings, 0 Bhikkhus, who has exercised
" rule and sovereignty over the four continents, on the dissolution
" of the body, after death, be re-born into a happy state in heaven,
"into a state of union with the Tavatirjsa Gods. And there, in the
** Grove of Delight, surrounded by crowds of houris, should pass his
" time in the possession and enjoyment of the five pleasures of sense.
*' If he be not possessed also of the Four Qualities, he is not set free
*' from (re-birth in) purgatory, or in the animal race, or as a ghost.
" He is not delivered, I say, from (re-birth in) evil states.

" And what though a disciple who has entered upon the Excellent
"Way (an Ariya-savako) live upon morsels of food and in much

EE-BIRTH AS AN ANIMAL. 237

" poverty. If he be possessed of tlie Four Qualities, he is set free
" from purgatory, and from life as an animal or a ghost. He is set
" free, I say, from (re-birth in) states of woe.

"And what are these Four Qualities? They are faith in the
" Buddha, in the Dhamma, and in the Saggha, and the practice of
" those virtues which are unbroken, intact, unspotted, unblemished ;
" vvhich make men free, and are praised by the wise ; which are
" untarnished (by the desire after a future life, or by a belief in the
" efficacy of outward acts) ; and which are conducive to high and
" holy thoughts."

The last clause is one of the stock descriptions ot the higher life
of the morality of the Noble Path. Compare the Book of the
Great Decease, i. 11, above, p. 31,

APPENDIX V.

Origen on Metempsycliosis.

I am indebted to my father for the following note on Origen's
references to Metempsychosis.

Palladius of Caesareia, who suffered martyrdom A.D. 309, in his
"Apology for Origen," which, with the exception of a few
fragments, only survives in a translation made by Kufinus of
Aquileia (died A.D. 410), thus explains the position taken up by
the great Alexandrian upon the subject :

" The most recent charge is that of ^ErtvffwfiaTtaaiq (trans-
*' incorporation), that is, the transmutation of souls. To which,
" as we have done with regard to otlier charges, we will reply in
" his own words." He then quotes Origen as saying, " But these
" things, so far as we are concerned, are not dogmata but spoken
** of for the sake of discussion, and that they may be rejected,"^

^ E.g. inMigne, Patrol. Graec. xvii. 608, and Routh, Relig. Sacr. iv. 383.
The passage is probably taken from his De Principiis, i. 8, in Migne, u.s. xi.,
Rufinus's translation of which is thus rendered bj' Dr. Crombie in the Anti-Nicene
Christian Library, x. 70 : " We think that those views are by no means to be
"admitted which some are wont unnecessarily to advance and maintain, viz. that
"souls descend to such a pitch of abasement that they forget their rational n.ature
"and dignity, and sink into the condition of irrational animals, either large or
"small; and in support of these assertions they generally quote some pretended
" statements of Scripture, such as, that a beast, to which a woman has unnaturally
"prostituted herself, shall be deemed equally guilty with the woman, and shall be
"ordered to be stoned ; or that a bull which strikes with its horns shall be put to
"death in the same way; or even the speaking of Balaam's ass, when God opened
"its mouth, and the dumb beast of burden, answering with human voice, reproved
"the madness of the prophet. All of which assertions we not only do not receive,
"but, as being contrary to our belief, we refute and reject." The original Greek

ORIGEN ON METEMPSYCHOSIS. 239

and proceeds to allege four other passages from his writings in
proof that he really held them to be false.

1. From Origen's seventh book on the Gospel according to
Matthew : " Some, indeed, have been of the opinion that the soul
"of Elias was the same as that of John, because it is said He is
"Elias which was to come. For since he said He is Elias,
" they thought that it could not be referred to anything else than
"his soul; and, from this saying alone almost, they brought in the
" dogma of /iereverw/xarwo-tc, that is, the transmutation of souls, as if
" Jesus himself were confirming this. But it ought to have been
"seen that, if this were true, something similar should be found

" in many writings of the Prophets and the Gospels as well

" It should be added that, according to what they think, the trans-
" mutation of souls takes place because of sins ; for what sins was
" the soul of Elias transmuted into John, whose birth was predicted
" by the very angel by whom that of Jesus was 1 How then is it
" not most evidently false, that he who was so perfect as not
" to even taste that death which is common to all, should come
"to a transmutation of soul, which according to their allegation
" cannot take place except because of sins V ^

2. From the eleventh book of the same work, where Origen
alleges that the opinion that " souls are passed over from human
" bodies into the bodies of animals," to be that of those who are
" strangers to the catholic faith," and explains his own to be,
" that as it is the virtue of the mind that bestows on any man
" that he may become a son of God, so it is evilness of mind
" . . . . that, according to the authority of Scripture, makes any

is given by Migne (u. s.) from a letter addresssd by the Emperor Justinian to Menas,
Patriarch of Constantinople, A.D. 536 — 552. Rufinus, as usual, translates with
great freedom.

It is to this passage in the De Principiis that Jerome refers in his letter to
Avitus (Ep. 124, al. 59, c. i. s.f. in Migne, Patrol. Lat. xxii. 1063), where he
quotes Origen much as Palladius has done according to Rufinus. The date of the
letter is c. A.D. 410.

^ C.x. in Migne, u.s. 609. This passage only survives in the translation of
Rufinus.

240 ORIGEN ON METE^rPSYCHOSIS.

" one to be called a dog ;" and that " in like manner are the desig-
" nations of other dumb animals to be understood." ^

3. From the thirteenth book of the same work, where, speaking
again of the case of Elias, Origen repeats his denunciation of the
dogma of the "transmutation of souls," and describes it as
" unknown to the Church of God, and one that neither was
'* delivered by an apostle nor anywhere appears in. the Scriptures."
When commenting upon the saying, He shall go before him in
the spirit of Elias, and contending that it was not said in the
soul of Elias in order " that ^erevtrwyiidrwfftc should have no place." '^

^ The original Greek is given in Migne, u. s. xiii. 963, and Routh, u. s. iv. 384.
Tertullian discusses the same subject at great length, De Anima, c. 32 : "Now
' our position is this, that the human soul cannot by any means at all be trans-
'ferred to beasts, even when they are supposed to originate, according to the
'philosophers, out of the substances of the elements. Now let us suppose that the
' soul is either fire, or water, or blood, or spirit, or air, or light ; we must not forget
'that all the animals in their several kinds have properties which are opposed to
' the respective elements. There are the cold animals which are opposed to fire.
* .... In like manner, those creatures are opposite to water which are in their

'nature dry and sapless So, again, some such creatures are opposed to

' blood which have none of its purple hue Then opposed to spirit are those

'creatures which seem to have no respiration Opposed, moreover, to air

' are those creatures which always live under ground and under water and never

' imbibe air Then opposed to light are those things which are either wholly

'blind, or possess eyes for the darkness only I maintain that, of which-

' soever of the before-mentioned natures the human soul is composed, it would not
'have been possible for it to pass for new forms into animals so contrary to each
'of the separate natures, and to bestow an origin by its passage on these beings,
'from which it would have to be excluded and i-ejected rather than to be admitted
'and received, by reason of that original contrariety which we have supposed it to
'possess; .... and then, again, by reason of the subsequent contrariety, which
'results from the developement inseparable from each several nature."

After some further argument in a similar strain, he concludes by saying: ". ...
'although some men are compared to the beasts because of their character, dis-
' position and pursuits, .... it does not on this account follow that rapacious
' persons become kites, lewd persons dogs, ill-tempered ones panthers, good men
' sheep, talkative ones swallows, and chaste men doves, as if the self-same sub-
' stance of the soul everywhere repeated its own nature in the properties of the
'animals (into which it passed)." Dr. Holms' Transl. Anti-Nicene Chris-
tian Library, xv. 485 — 487. Tertullian continues the discussion in the fol-
lowing chapter.

^ The original Greek is given by Migne, u.s. xiii. 1091. Either Palladius or
Rufinus only give the substance of the passage. Tertullian ascribes the use of the

OEIGEN ON METEMPSYCHOSIS. 241

4. From his book on the Proverbs : " The assertion that souls
" are transforined from bodies into other bodies seems to have
" occurred to some of those also who appear to believe in Christ,
" in consequence of some passages of sacred Scriptures, they not
" understanding what is written. For they do not observe how a
" man may become or made a chicken, or a horse, or a mule, and
*' they thought that the human soul is transmuted into the bodies
'* of cattle, just as they thought that it sometimes assumed the body
" of a viper." The passage now becomes obscure, but the meaning
would appear to be, that this took place just as the devil took the
form of a serpent, "which if they say, they ought also to say that
'* he sometimes takes that of a dragon or a lion." ^

argument derived from the case of Elias to the followers of Carpocrates: ". . . .
" whom they so assume to have been reproduced in John as to make our Lord's
"statement sponsor for their theory of transmigration when he said, Elias is
"come already, and they knew him not; and again, in another passage,
"And if ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come.
" Well, then, was it really in a Pythagorean sense that the Jews approached John
"with the inquiry. Art thou Elias? and not rather in the sense of the Divine
"prediction, Behold, I will send you Elijah the Tisbite? The fact,
••however, is, that their metempsychosis or transmigration theory signifies the
" recall of the soul which had died long before, and its return to some other body.
" But Elias is to come again, not after quitting life (in the way of dying), but after
"his translation (or removal without dying) ; not for the purpose of being restored
" to the body, from which he had not departed, but for the purpose of revisiting
"the world from which he was translated ; not by way of resuming a life which he

"had laid aside, but of fulfilling pi-ophecy How, therefore, could John be

"Elias? You have your answer in the angel's announcement, And he shall go
"before the people, says he, in the spirit and power of Elias, — not
" (observe) in his soul and in his body. These substances are, in fact, the natural
"property of each individual; whilst the spirit and power are bestowed as
"external gifts by the grace of God, and so may be transferred to another person
"according to the purpose and will of the Almighty." .... Of the Soul, u. s.
496, 497.

^ Migne, u.s. 613. This passage also only survives in the translation of Rufinus.
In the De Principiis, Origen comments on one of these passages, 1 Cor. xv. 28,
as follows: "Since, then, it is promised that in the end God will be all in all,
"men are not to suppose that animals, either sheep or other cattle, come to that
''end, lest it should be implied that God dwelt even in animals, whether sheep
"or other cattle; and so, too, with pieces of wood or stones, lest it should be said

"that God is in these also Let us then inquire what all those things are

" which God is to become in all. I am of the opinion that tlie expression, by which

R

242 ORIGEN ON METEMPSYCHOSIS.

The following passage from Palladius himself on a cognate
subject may not be without interest : " Some think that bodies
"having been prepared and formed in the womb of women, tunc ad
"prsesem, then immediately souls are created and inserted in the
"already formed body; not to say that this cannot be proved from
" Scripture — those who hold it do in measure accuse the righteous-
"ness of the Creator, because he does not equally assign to all that
"is like surroundings of life (sequas vitte conversationes). For
"immediately that the soul was created, when as yet it had com-
"mitted no fault, it is inserted, if it so happened, into a blind
' ' body, or one that was otherwise weak ; some, moreover (are in-
"serted) into healthy bodies, and others into more delicate ones.
" To some also long time of life is assigned, to others a very short
"one, so that sometimes as soon as they were born they were
"expelled from the body; and some, moreover, are led into rude
" and barbarous surroundings, and where there is nothing human
" or honourable, and Avhere an impious parental training is supreme.
" Some, however, are handed over to honourable men, sober, human,
" and where the observation of human laws flourishes ; sometimes,
" too, to religious parents, where they (have) a noble and an honour-
" able education and reasonable instruction.

"God is said to be all in all, means that He is all in each individual person.
"Now He will be all in each individual in this way, when all with any rational
" understanding, cleansed from the dregs of every sort of vice, and with every cloud
" of wickedness completely swept away, can either feel, or understand, or think, will
" be wholly God ; and when it will no longer behold or retain anything else than
" God, but when God will be the measure and standard of all its movements ; and
" thus God will be all, for there will no longer be any distinction of good and evil,
" seeing evil nowhere exists ; for God is all things, and to Him no evil is near ; nor
" will there be any longing or desire to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good
"and evil, on the part of him who is always in the possession of good, and to whom
" God is all. So, then, when the end has been restored to the beginning, and the
"termination of things compared with their commencement, that condition of things
" will be re-established in which rational nature was placed, when it had no need
"to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ; so that when all feeling of
" wickedness has been removed, and the individual has been purified and cleansed,
"He who alone is the one good God becomes to him all, and that not in the case
" of a few individuals, or of a considerable number, but He Himself is all in all."
Anti-Nicene Christian Library x 264, 266; Migne, u. s. xi. 335 et seq.

ORIGEN ON METEMPSYCHOSIS. 243

" Then stronger objection still lies by the opinion that souls arc
" the insufflation of the Spirit of God, because it is the substance of
" God that sins, if the soul, which is the substance of God, sins ;
" besides it will be subject to punishment for sin. And if the soul

"is created simultaneously with body, it must die so too

"If, like other animalia, men spring from seed only, so that the
"soul is diffused with the same seed, what shall w-e say of the
" deformed and of abortions 1 . . . . All souls are of one substance,
"and are immortal and rationable, (endowed with) free-will and
" choice ; that they are to be judged for what they did in this life ;
" and that they were made by God, who established and created all
" things. But when they were made, what danger is there in the
"opinion that it was all at once of old, or by one by one now?"^

* Apolog. for Grig, in Migne, it. s. xvii. G04. = Teitullian, De Anima, c, iv.;
Anti-Nicene Library, u.s. 418, c. xxv. ib. 468.

APPENDIX VI.

Leibnitz and Lessing on Transmigration.

In his Systfeme Nouveau de la Nature,^ Leibnitz discusses
the possibility of life before birth and after death, and says inter
alia:

" § 6 Des plus excellents observateurs de notre terns sont

'•' venues a mon secours, et m'ont fait admettre plus ais^ment que
"raniraal, et toute autre substance organis^e, ne commence point
' ■ lorque nous le croyons, et quo sa g^n^ration apparente n'est qu'un

" developement, et une espece d'augmentation § 7. Ainsi n'y

"a-t-il personne qui puisse bien marquer le veritable terns de la
" mort, laquelle peut passer long-tems pour une simple suspension
"des actions notables, et dans le fond n'est jamais autre chose dans

"les simples animaux : temoin les ressuscitations II est done

"naturel que Fanimal ayant toujours ete vivant et organist, il le
" demeure aussi toujours, Et puis qu' ainsi il n'y a point de premiere
" naissance ni de generation enti^rement nouvello de I'animal, il
" s'ensuit qu'il n'y en aura point d'extinction finale, ni de mort eutiere
"prise a la rigueur metaphysique ; et par consequant au lieu de la
"transmigration des ames, il n'y a qu'une transformation d'un meme
•' animal, selon que les organes sont plies differemment, et plus ou
" moins develop^s."

And then further on, in § 9, he quotes with approval " I'ancien
•' auteur du livre de la Diete qu'on attribue a Hippocrate, ....

' Journal des Savans, 27 Juin, 1695. Reprinted in Leibn. 0pp. ed.
Dutens, Vol. ii. Pt. i. p. 49, and in Leibn. 0pp. Phil. ed. Erdmaun, Pt. i.
p. 124.

LEIBNITZ AND LESSING ON TRANSMIGRATION. 215

"que les animaux ne nourrent et ne meurent point, et que les choses
"qu'on croit commencor ot perir, ne font que paroitre et disparoitrc'
Leibnitz therefore, like Gotama, rejects transmigration only to
adopt a theory Avhich allows of pre-existence, and of a connection of
cause and effect between different individuals. And in Lessing's
opinion, as in Gotama's, there is a law of nature which involves
continuity of being between different individuals. I only know
his theory, which is contained in a rare tract entitled " Dass mehr
als fiinf Sinne ftir den menschen seiu konnen," from the
summary given by Professor Goldstiicker in his article on Trans-
migration, contributed to Knight's Encyclopaedia Metropo-
litana, and reprinted in the Literary Eemains of Theodor
Goldstiicker, p. 218. He there says :

" His arguments are briefly these : The soul is a simple being,
' capable of infinite conceptions. But being a finite being, it is
' not capable of such infinite conceptions at the same time. It
' must obtain them gradually in an infinite succession of time. If,
' however, it obtain them gradually, there must be an order in
' which and a degree to which these conceptions are acquired.
' This order and this measure are the senses. At present the soul
' has of senses five. But neither is there any ground to assume
' that it has commenced with having five senses, nor that it will
' stop there. For since nature never takes a leap, the soul must

* have gone through all the lower stages before it arrived at that

* which it occupies now. And since nature contains many
' substances and powers which are not accessible to those senses

* with which it is now endowed, it must be assumed that there
' ■will be future stages, at which the soul will have as many senses

* as correspond with the powers of nature. And this my system" —
Lessing concludes his essay in a fragmentary note discovered after
Lis death — "this my system is certainly the oldest of all philo-
" sophical systems. For it is, in reality, no other than the system
" of the pre-existence of the soul and metempsychosis, which did
" not only occupy the speculation of Phythagoras and Plato, but
" also before them of Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Persians — in short,

246 LEIBXITZ AND LESSING ON TRANSMIGRATION.

" of all the sages of the East. And this circumstance alone
" ought to work a prejudice in its favour. For the first and oldest
" opinion is, in matters of speculation, always the most probable,
" because common sense immediately hit upon it. '

APPENDIX VII.

On Souls going to tlie Moon.

On the curious belief mentioned above, p. 82, of souls going to
the moon, Mr. Tylor says, in his Primitive Culture, ii. 69, 70:

" Fourthly, in old times and new, it has come into men's minds
" to lix upon the sun and moon as abodes of departed souls. "When
"we have learnt from the rude Natchez of the Mississippi and the
" Apalaches of Florida that the sun is the bright dwelling of de-
" parted chiefs and braves, and have traced like thoughts on into
" the theologies of Mexico and Peru, then we may compare these
" savage doctrines with Isaac Taylor's ingenious supposition, in his
"Physical Theory of Another Life, that the sun of each pla-
"netary system is the house of the higher and ultimate spiritual
"corporeity, in the centre of assembly to those who have passed on
" the planets their preliminary era of corruptible organization. Or
"perhaps some may prefer the Eev. Tobias Swinden's book, pub-
"lished in the last century, and translated into French and German,
" which proved the sun to be hell, and its dark spots gatherings of
" damned souls. And when in South America the Saliva Indians
" have pointed out the moon as their paradise, where no mosquitos
" are, and the Guaycurus have shown it as the home of chiefs and
"medicine-men deceased, and the Polynesians of Tokelan, in like
"manner, have claimed it as the abode of departed kings and chiefs,
"then these pleasant fancies may be compared with that ancient
" theory mentioned by Plutarch, that hell is in the air and elysium
" in the moon ; and again, with the mediaBval conception of the

248 ON SOULS GOING TO THE MOON.

"moon as the seat of hell,^ a thouglit elaborated in profoundest
*' bathos by Mr. M. F. Tupper :

" * I know thee well, 0 Moon, thou cavern'd realm,
Sad Satellite, thou giant ash of death,
Blot on God's firmament, pale home of crime,
Scarr'd prison-house of sin, where damned souls
Feed upon punishment. Oh, thought sublime,
That amid night's black deeds, when evil prowls
Through the broad world, thou, watching sinners well,
Glarest o'er all, the wakeful eye of — Hell !'"

Skin for skin, the brown savage is not ill matched in such specu-
lative lore with the white philosopher.

The Manicheans had a belief which it would be well to compare
with the above. So Epiphanius (Adv. Haar. 66) gives the following
as the views of Tyrbo :

" The wisdom of tlie more than good God, bethinking itself that
" the soul diffused through everything, being captive of the princes
"and opposite principle and root, was cast into bodies — for its sake^
". .. . placed these lights in the heavens, the Sun, the Moon,
"and the Stars — having performed this work by what the Greeks
"say are the twelve elements. And the elements, he (i.e. Tyrbo)
" maintains, draw the souls of dying men and other animals, they
" being of the nature of light, bear them to a light boat (because ho
" wishes to call the sun and moon voyages), and the light boat, or
"ship, is laden up to the fifteenth day, according to the fulness of
" the moon, and so it (the soul) is sent on and set down from the
" fifteenth day in the great ship, that is the sun. The sun then
"carries them on into the world of life and the region of the blessed,
"And thus souls are sent on by the sun and the moon."

And this is confirmed, though with some difference in detail, by
the Disputaton of Archclaus, where it is said of the doctrine
of Manes :

1 See Alger, Future Life, p. 590.

' The Manicheans hold the soul to be a part cf God (;is the Stoics did).

ON SOUL GOING TO THE MOON. 249

" When the living Father perceived that the soul was in tribula-
"tion in the body, He sent his own Son for (its) salvation. Then
"He came and prepared the work which was to effect the salvation
**of the souls, and with that object prepared an instrument with
"twelve urns (mSovg), which is made to revolve with the sphere,
"and draws up with it the souls of the dying. And the greater
"luminary receives those souls, and purifies them with its rays, and
" then passes them over to the moon, and in this manner the moon's
"disc, as it is designated by us, is filled up. For he (i.e. Manes)
"says that these two luminaries are ships or passage boats {TTo<pB^i'ia).
"Then, if the moon becomes full, it ferries its passengers across
"towards the E. wind, and thereby effects its own waning in getting
"itself delivered of its freight. And in this manner it goes on
"making the passage across, and again discharging its freight of
"souls drawn up by the urns, until it saves its own proper portion
"of the souls.

"Moreover, he (Manes) maintains that every soul, yea, every
"living creature, partakes of the substance of the good Father. And
"accordingly, when the moon delivers over its freight of souls to
"the peons of the Father, they abide there in that pillar of glory
"which is called the perfect air. And this air is a pillar of light,
"for it is filled in the souls that are being purified."

APPENDIX VIII.

Plato on the Soul.

As this volume is likely to fall into the hands of readers in the
East who may not be able to refer to the passage for themselves, I
here add the context of the passage quoted above, pp. 95 — 97, from
the PhiBdo :

" And this is the reason .... why the true votaries of philosophy
" abstain from all fleshly lusts, and endure and refuse to give them-
" selves up to them, — not because they fear poverty or the ruin of
" their families, like the lovers of money and the world in general ;
" nor like the lovers of power and honour, because they dread the
" dishonour or disgrace of evil deeds. .... Therefore they who have
" any care of their own souls, and do not merely live moulding and
"fashioning the body, say fareweU to all this, they will not walk
"in the ways of the blind; and when philosophy offers them
"purification and release from evil, they feel that they ought not to
"resist her influence, and whither she leads they turn and follow.

" . . . . The lovers of knowledge are conscious that their souls,
"when philosophy takes them in hand, are simply fastened and
"glued to their bodies • the soul is able to view real existence only
" through the bars of a prison, and not of herself unhindered ; she
"is wallowing in the mire of all ignorance ; and philosophy, behold-
"ing the terrible nature of her confinement, inasmuch as the captive
"through lust becomes a chief accomplice in her own captivity, —
" for the lovers of knowledge are aware that this was the original
"state of the soul, but that when she was in this state philosophy
"adopted and comforted her, and wanted to release her, pointing

PLATO ON THE SOUL. 251

" out to her that the eye and the ear and the other senses are full
" of deceit, and persuading her to retire from them in all but the
" necessary use of them, and to be gathered up and collected into
" herself, and to trust only to herself and her own pure apprehensions
" of pure existence, and to mistrust whatever comes to her through
"other channels and is subject to vicissitude, — philosophy, I say,
"shows her that all her own nature is intelleetual and invisible.
" And the soul of the true philosopher thinks that she ought not to
" resist this deliverance, and therefore abstains from pleasures and
" desires and pains and fears, as far as she is able ; reflecting that
" when a man has great joys or sorrows or fears or desires, he suffers
" from them, not merely the sort of evil which might be anticipated,
" — as, for example, the laws of his health or property, which he
" has sacrificed to his lusts, — but an evil greater far, which is the
" greatest and worst of all evils, and one of which he never thinks.

"And what it that, Socrates? said Cebes.

" Why, that when the feeling of pleasure and pain in the soul is
"most intense, all of us naturally suppose that the object of this
" intense feeling is then plainest and truest ; but such is not the

" case And this is the state in which the soul is most en-

" thralled by the body^ .... because each pleasure and pain is a
" sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the body, until she
" becomes like the body, and believes that to be true Avhich the
" body affirms to be true ; and from agreeing with the body and
"having the same delights, slie is obliged to have the same habits
" and haunts, and is not likely ever to be pure at her departure ....
"but is always impeded by the body ; and so she sinks into another
"body and there germinates and grows."

^ Rep. X. : Jowett, iii. 51 G seq.

APPENDIX IX.

Purther Note on tlie word Pitaka.

In connection with the remark on p. 49, as to the use of the
word Pitaka, or Basket, for the Buddhist canon, it has been pointed
out to me that Epiphanius of Salamis, the well-known Haeresiologist
of the fourth century, entitled his great work Uavapiov, which is
the Latin pannarium, originally used of a bread-basket, whence
our English pannier. He, however, explains the sense in which
he used the word by the addition, " sive capsulam medicum." The
parallel is curious and perhaps suggestive.

Schlagintweit informs us, in his Buddhism in Tibet (pp. 97, 98)
that an image of one of the Buddhist Upasakas, put up in the mo-
nastery of Gyungul, " carries a basket filled with the sheets of a

" religious book This very ancient mode of using a basket for

"the palm-leaves .... is said to be still in use in Tibet, the single
" volumes of larger works being put together into a common basket."
No information is given as to the age of the image, but it is certainly
very late, perhaps a century or so old. I only quote the passage as
evidence of modern Tibetan ideas on the subject.

APPENDIX. X.

Nirvana.

When, in writing my manual of Buddhism, I was endeavouring
to reconcile the apparently discrepant descriptions of Nirvana which
had led some scholars to the conclusion that it meaut the annihi-
lation of being or the annihilation of the soul, and others to the
contrary conclusion, that it meant the eternal existence of the soul
in a state of bliss, and was gradually led to the startling conclusion
that Gotama, in his description of Nirvana, was expressing no opi-
nion at all, either one way or the other, as to existence after death,
but was proclaiming a salvation from the sorrows of life which was
to be reached here on earth in a changed state of mind, I saw
indeed that this explanation would remove all the previous difficul-
ties in the passages then before me, but I little thought that further
research in the Pali Scriptures would disclose any passages in which
the misunderstandings of European investigators would be clearly
and authoritatively met. This has, however, been the case. Every
day, as new portions of the Pali Pitakas are being made accessible,
fresh confirmation is being afforded to the truth of the view I had
ventured to put forward, and Dr. Frankfurter has been the first to
point out three important passages in the SagyuttaNikaya which
would be decisive on the point if it were still open to doubt. In
two of these passages Sariputta, and in the third Gotama himself,
are represented as stating, in answer to a direct question what Nir-
vana is, that it is the destruction of passion, malice, and delusion
(raga, dosa, and moha). The context may be seen in Dr. Frank-
furter's paper in the Journal of the Koyal Asiatic Society
for 1880, in which the full Piili texts are given, with summarized
translations and notes.

APPENDIX XL

The Key-note of the " Great Vehicle."

Had I had time for another Lecture, I should have been glad of
the opportunity of enlarging further on the idea of a desire to
save all living creatures, quoted ahove, p. 112, from the
Sutra of the 42 Sections.

It is acknowledged that the Great Vehicle, the Mahayana,
entirely supplanted in Northern India the older Buddhism of the
Little Vehicle, the Hinayana. What was it that gave to the later
movement that superior vital power which enabled it to outlive the
earlier teaching? Mr, Beal, in the Introduction to his Travels
of Fa Hian, pp. Ivii and foil., places the distinguishing charac-
teristics of the newer school in certain metaphysical subtleties which
could scarcely have gained for it the ear of the multitude. I venture
to think that the idea referred to above, as summarized in the theory
of Bodisatship, is the key-note of the later school, just as Ara-
h at ship is the key-note of early Buddhism. The Mahayana doctors
said, in effect : " We grant you all you say about the bliss of attain-
" ing Nirvana in this life. But it produces advantage only to your-
" selves ; and according to your own theory there will be a necessity
" for Buddhas in the future as much as there has been for Buddhas
" in the past. Greater, better, nobler, then, than the attainment of
" Arahatship, must be the attainment of Bodisatship from a desire
"to save all living creatures in the ages that will come."

The new teaching, therefore, was in no conscious contradiction to
the old ; it accepted it all, and was based upon it. Its distinguish-
ing characteristic was the great stress which it laid on one point of

THE KEY-NOTE OF THE "GREAT VEHICLE." 255

the earlier doctrine to the gradual overshadowing of the rest. Its
strengtli lay in the grandeur of its appeal to self-renunciation. It is
true the newer school unconsciously changed the centre point of the
system, the focus of their mental vision ; and tho logical consequences
of the step they had taken led to the corruption of Buddhism, They
might have been wiser had they perceived that their duty to the
race would have been more completely fulfilled by their acting up
to the ideal of Arahatship. But it was at least no slight merit to
have been led, even though they were led astray, by a sense of duty
to the race. And readers of the Mahayana books, tedious as they
have so often been called, will find them acquire a new significance
and a new beauty when they are read in the li^lit of this conception.

IISTDEX.

The pronunciation of Pali words is exceedingly easy. The vowels
have always the same sound as in Italian or German (except that
unaccented short a is pronounced as u in but), and the consonants
the same as in English (except that c = ch, n = ny, and rj = ng).
The dotted t, d, n, are the same as in English ; but the simple d, t, n,
are pure dentals, — that is, they are pronounced with the tongue
against the teeth. The accent is always on the long syllable. For
further details, see my manual, Buddhism, p. v.

Abhidhamma, does not mean
metaphysics, 49.

Acosta, Jesuit father, his expla-
nation of Mexican ritual, 3.

Addhariya Brahmans, 57.

Adi-brahmacariyar), 35.

Agnostic, Gotama not an, 90,

Alger's " Future Life," 79, 248.

"Alice in Wonderland" quoted,
101.

Amata, name of Kirvana, 137.

Ananda, the beloved disciple, 180.

Anatta-sanna, 208.

Anicca-sanna, 208.

Anguttara Nikaya, 45 — 47.

Animism, 13, 30, 74, 146. De-
tails of, as condemned in Bud-
dhism, 67, 68.

Aparamattha, untarnished (vir-
tue), 102.

Arahatship, 99, 100, 102, 103,
107, 121, 137, 207, 254.

Arnold, Edwin, his "Light of
"Asia," 140.

Aryan races, early beliefs of, 13.
Did not include transmigra-
tion, 74,

Asoka's Edicts, 3.

Assalayana Sutta summarized,
51—55.

Atharva Veda, use of, 15.

Attavada, 208.

Bavari, an aged Brahman, 171 —

173.
Beal, Eev. Samuel, 112, 200, 204.
Bhandagama, a village, 99.
Bharadvaja, a Brahman, 56 — 59.
Bigandet, Bishop, quoted, 150.
Brahma -God, 58, 64, 138.

S

258

INDEX.

Brahmacariya Brahmans, 57.
Bi'ahmajala Sutta quoted, 205,

229.
Brahmans, 23.
Brahmanas, the, caste teaching

in, 23. Future life in, 81.
Bij..^le quoted, 21.
Buddha, a description of, 57, 63,

64,142. The,idealof,141— 151.
Buddhas, theory of, Jain and

Buddhist, 27.
Buddha-gaya, 127.
Bunsen, Ernest de, quoted, 151.
Burmese Buddhism, 150.

Cariya Pitaka, doctrine of Karma

in the, 107.
Carlyle, 135, 140.
Caste, Hindu notion of, discussed,

22 — 25. Buddhist view as to,

51—55
Catholic beliefs, 6, 7.
Cetokhila Sutta quoted, 103.
Ceylonese Buddhism, 150.
Chakka-vatti, the ideal king of

kings, 130—140.
Chandava Brahmans, 57.
Chandoka Brahmans, 57.
Chandagutta. first king of India,

130.
Charms, 26.

Childers, Professor, 166.
Chinese Buddhist books, 199 —

204.
Clement of Alexandria, his me-
thod of comparative inquiry, 3.
Commandments, the Buddhist

Ten, 66, 67.
Comparative mythology, methods

of, 9.

Comparative philology, methods

of, 5, 9.
Comparative study of religious

beliefs, right and wrong uses

of, 1—10.
Comtism compared to Buddhism,

31.
" Confections," 101.
Confucius, 21, 123.
Connubium in ancient India, 23.
Cust's "Linguistic, &c., Essays"

quoted, 125.
Cycles of improvement and decay,

111.

Datha-var)sa quoted, 150.
Desire, Buddhism does not teach

the abandonment of, 207.
Despair of life in India, 21.
Devayana in Buddhism, 106.
Dhamma, the Buddhist literature

of, 44—50.
Dhammapada quoted, 163 — 165.
Dlgha-bhanaka, 49.
Digha Nikaya, 45.
Dipavaqsa quoted, 126.
Disputation of Archelaus, 254.
Ditthi, the term explained, 155.
Dods, Dr., quoted, 109.

Egyptian ideas allied to transmi-
gration, 75.

Elephant, the mystic Treasure of,
132.

Eliot, George, quoted, 110. .

Emerson quoted, 114.

Epic of Humanity, 217.

Epiphanius of Salamis, 250, 252.

Exoteric and esoteric doctrines,
181.

IXDEX.

259

Faith, reason, and works, 180.

Fa Khieu Pi Hu, a Chinese book,
l'J9— 202.

Fate, Greek and Muhammadan,
113.

Figuier's "Le Lendemain de la
Mort," 80.

Foreknowledge, 113.

Foucaux, M., quoted, 112, 197.

Future hfe, beHef in, in the Vedic
times, 15, 16. Among the
Jews, 16, 80. None in Bud-
dhism, 109. Buddhist substi-
tute for, 214, 215.

Gibbon quoted, 168.

Gotama, the Buddha, sketch of

life of, 126, 127. Of Akvi,

173.
Greg, " Enigmas of Life," quoted,

163.

Heaven, hope of, in Buddhism,

104, 105.
Hereditary occupations, 24.

Priesthoods, 24.
Hinayana. See Vehiclei.
Hiuen Thsang, 198.
Horoscopes, 26.
Horse, the mystic white, 132.
House of Commons, speech in,

1530, 5.
Hume, David, 125, 155.
" Hymns Ancient and Modern,"

140.

Iddhis, the four, 134.
Impermanency, doctrine of, 211.
Immutability of Komanism and

Buddhism, 190.
India, a god, 61.

Insight, foundation of goodness,

209.
Intoning of hymns, 25.
Isana, a god, 61.

Jacobi, Professor, 27.
Jagan-nath as Buddha andVishnu,

33.
Jains, their theory of the Bud-

dhas, 27.
Jataka stories, re-birth in the,

108. Quoted, 116—121.
Jerome, St., quoted, 169.
Jewels of the Law, the seven,

205.
Jewish belief in transmigration,

78.
Johnson's Oriental Religions

quoted, 7.
Justification by faith, 209.

Kammavacas, 38 — 40.

Kauishka, king of North India,
197.

Kapila's school of philosophy, 27.

Kapila-vatthu, Gotama's birth-
place, 126.

Kappas, ages, 211.

Karma, Buddhist theory of, 92 — •
94, 115.

Kassapa of Uruvela, his conver-
sion, 158, 159.

Khandhakas of the Vinaya, 42.
Translation of, 44.

Khattiya, the second caste, 53.

King of Eighteousness, 129 —
149.

Kingsborough, Lord, his Anti-
quities of Mexico quoted, 3.

Kisi-gotami, her song, 160.

260

INDEX.

Knowledge, the foundation of
religion, in the Upani.shads
and in Buddhism, 28, 29, 209,
210.

Koliyans, clan of, 126.

Koppen's "Geschichte des Bud-
dhismus," 150.

Kshatriya, the second caste, 24.

Kusi-nagara, where Gotania died,
127.

Lalita Vistara, its value as evi-
dence of early Buddhism, 197.
Its date, 198—204.

Legge,Dr., his Eeligions of China
quoted, 8.

LiverpooirreeLibrary,Pali MSS.
in, 38.

Logos, ideal of, compared with
that of the Buddha, 143—151.

Loka-natha, epithet of the Bud-
dha, 33.

Love, universal, in Buddhism,
29, 110—112.

Lucretius quoted, 165.

Magga-brahma-cariyai], 55.
Mahaparinibbana Sutta quoted,

29, 100, 106, 150, 206.
Mahavagga quoted, 145, 159.
Mahay ana. See Vehicle.
Mahiddhi, a god, 61.
Majjhima Nikaya, 45.
Mara, the Evil Spirit, 138, 144,

149.
Manicheans, curious doctrine of,

248.
Manasiikata, a village, 56.
Messiah, ideal of, compared with

Cakka-vatti, 135—138.
Metta Sutta quoted, 111.

Mexican ritual, 3.

Monotheism, its relation to Poly-
theism, 30.

Monotheists, were the Jews sol
19.

Montalembert's "Monks of the
West," 168.

Muifs Sanskrit texts quoted, 1 6.

Nepalese Buddhism, 142.

Nikayas, the five, 45.

Nirvana, its analogue in "Western
thought, 31. Its meaning in
Buddhism, 100, 161. Attain-
ment of, difficult, 162. No-
thing less than to be desired,
176. Note on, 253.

Noble Path, the so-called, 55,
205.

Northern Buddhism, an incorrect
term, 189.

Numbers, Christian, Buddhist,
and Pythagorean, 47.

Order, the Buddhist, forms in
use in, 38 — 40. Pules of, 4 1 — •
44. Beginnings of the history
of, 156. Early spirit of, 170.
Conditions of the welfare of,
174—180.

Origen on transmigration, 79,
238—243.

Pacceka-Buddhas, the term ex-
plained, 146.

Pajapati, a god, 61.

Pali Text Society, 71, 232—235.

Pancagatiyo, 239.

Pancavaggiya ascetics, 144.

Pantheism, Greek, Indian, and
modern, 19 — 21.

INDEX.

261

Parivara-patha, appendix to the \
Vinaya, 42. j

Patimokkha, a list of offences, '
41, 42. Translation of, 44.

Pavarana festival, 41.

Peace, the Buddhist longing after,
158—163.

Pessimism, 22.

Pingiya,an aged Brahman, 171 —
173.

Pischel's " Assalayana Sutta," 51.

Pitaka, a later name of the
Buddhist Scriptures, 49, 252.

Plato on the soul, 95, 98, 250.

Polytheism grew out of Ani-
mism, 14, 30.

Predestination, 113, 114.

Pre-existence, 115.

Prayer, ancient Indian view of,
25. No prayer in Euddhism,41.

Purgatory, Catholic and Bud-
dhist, 105.

Purity, superstitions regarding,
24.

Pythagoras, 47, 75, 123.

Eace, duty to the, 110.
Eajanyas, the secouil caste, 23.
Eajendra Lai Mitra, 199.
Eapti, a river, 56, 60.
Ee-birth as an animal, 105 — 109,

239, 240.
Eeligious liberty as held by the

early Buddhists, 229—231.
Eenunciation, 139, 167.
Eig Veda, records an advanced

stage in religious belief, 13.

Is not a complete record of

early Indian religious beliefs,

14, 15.

Eishis, the authors of the Vedas,
58, 142.

Sabbasawa Sutta quoted, 88, 89.
Stikya clan, 126.
Samadhi, 180.
Samma-sambuddha, meaning of,

16, 145—147.

Sar)gha. See Order, the Buddhist.

Sai]kharas, 101.

Saukhya, or numeral philosophy,
27.

Saqyojanas, the ten Fetters, 47,
103, 208.

Sarjyutta Mkaya, 45, 46.

Sari{)utta, a chief disciple, 45,
137, 180.

Scht'Uing quoted, 115.

Schlagintweit's Buddhism in
Tibet, 252,

Science of Eeligion, the term
discussed, 10.

Self or soul, 28, 209,212.

Separation from the world, 163.

Silas, the three (moral conduct),
65, 137. Compared with rea-
son and faith, 180.

Socrates compared to Gotama, 156.

Socratic Dialogues, 45.

Soma, a god, 61.

Sotapatti-sarjyutta quoted, 239.

Soul-theory, universal stage in
religious belief, 24. Denied
in Buddhism, 29.

Soul, belief of early Aryans re-
garding, 15. Pre-existence of,

17. The Great Soul, 20.
Knowledge of, the mystical,
28. Going to the moon after
death of the body, 82, 247.

262

INDEX.

St. Hilaire. " Le Bouddha et sa

Eeligion/' 197.
Strauss's Life of Christ, 35.
Siidras, the fourth caste, 23.
" Supernatural Religion," 36.
Sutta Nipata quoted, 106, 107,

111, 121, 171.
Suttas, the Pali Buddhist, 45.
Sutta-vibhar)ga, exposition of the

Patimokkha, 42.

Tanha, craving, cause of re-birth,
95. Similar doctrines in Plato,
96 — 98. Cessation of, in Ara-
hatship, 99.

Tertullian on the soul, 240.

Tevijja Sutta summarized, 56 —
69.

Thomas a Kempis, 166.

Tibetan ritual, 193. Praying
wheels, 138. Doctrine of ema-
nations, 142.

Tibetanism and Eomanism, 3,
193.

Tittiriya Brahmans, 57.

Transmigration of souls not Vedic,
73. Probably not an original
Aryan conception, 74. Vari-
ous instances of belief in, 76 —

80. In the early Upanishads,

81. Later Hindu view of,
83—86. Not taught by Go-
tama, 91.

Trenckner's "PaliMiscellany,"49.
Tylor's "Primitive Culture," 75,
247.

Tyrbo, the Manichean, 248.

Unitarianism amongJewSjGreeks,

and Hindus, 18.
Upanishads, 26—28, 106, 108,

210, 211.
Upasamo cessation, 212.
Uposatha meetings of the Order,

41.

Yaisyas, the third caste, 23.

Varuna, a god, 61.

Vasettha, a young Brahman, 56 —

69!'
Yedantist philosophy, 27, 31.
Vehicle, the so-called Great, 194,

254. The Little, 254.
Veluviya, the mystic gem, 133.
Vinaya Pitaka, its contents, 42.

Its age, 43, 44.

Wheel, mystic Treasure of. the,

131, 133.
Wisdom, Christian and Buddhist

ideals of, 141—151.
Woman, the ideal, 134.
Women, as teachers in ancient

India, 154.
Wood's " Animals Here and

Hereafter," 80.

Yama, a god, 61.
Yatramulle Unnanse, 187.

Zoroaster, 123.

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

I. Buddhism : being a Sketch of the Life and Teach-

ings of Gotama the Buddha. "With a JNIap. (Small 8vo ;
Loudon — Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1878.)
Seventh Tlwusand. 2s. 6d.

"We do not know of any other work from which so fair and complete an account
can be obtained of that wonderful religion which has so much in common with
Christianity, and has numbered more adherents than any other religion in the
world.' ' — A cadany.

" Altogether higher stands the little work of Mr. Rhys Davids, .... written in
an agreeable style, and with great knowledge of the facts, .... which we should
wish to see in the hands of all students of religious history, and hope to see trans-
lated into our own language." — Theologisch Tijdschrift.

II. Buddhist Birth Stories, or Jataka Tales; the
Oldest Collection of Folk-lore extant. (8 vo ; London — Truhner.
Vol. L 1880.) 18s.

This is a translation from the Pali text of the standard Buddhist Collection as
edited by Professor Fausboll, and is preceded by an Introduction on the history of
the Birth-story literature, and by bibliographical and other tables.

"Among the various contributions to the comparative study of folk-lore, Mr.
Rhys Davids's translation of the Jatakas must take a foremost place." — Saturday
Review.

"These tales are the nearest representatives of the original Aryan stories from
which sprang the folk-lore of Europe as well as of India, and .from which the
Semitic nations also borrowed much. The Introduction contains a most interesting
disquisition on the migrations of those fables, tracing their reappearance in the
various groups of folk-lore legends known as '^Esop's Fables,' 'The Hitopadesa,'
'The Kalilag and Damnag Series,' and even 'The Arabian Nights.' Among other
old friends we meet with a version of the Judgment of Solomon, which proves after
all to be an Aryan, and not a Semitic tale." — Times.

" It is certain that no more competent exponent of Buddhism could be found
than Mr. Rhys Davids, and that these Birth Stories, of which he has now given
ns the first instalment, will be of the greatest interest and importance to students."
St. James's Gazette.

" The translation could not have fallen into better hands. And what is no small
merit, when we consider the involved style of Buddhist writings, it is easy to read,
though at the same time it is faiihiul throughout."— iZerwc de Vhistoire des
Religions.

" The English version, while strictly literal, is thoroughly idiomatic. It is not too
much to say that no Pali scholar could have been found more competentfor the
work than "he to whom it has been entrusted. He has thoroughly entered into the
spirit of his original, and his renderings, even of the most difficult passages, are
always most accurate and felicitous. In a valuable and interesting Introduction,
the translator traces the course of transmigration of the Buddhist stories and fables
from East to West— by many and various courses, Hindu, Persian, Arabic, Syriac,
Greek— through the Kalilag and Damnag literature down to the so-called fables
of .ffisop." — Contemporary Review.

T

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

III. Eeport on the existing European Literature on Pali

and Siijlialese in Transactions of the Philological Society, 1875,
1876. (London— Trubner & Co.) 6s.

"In the Anniversary Address for 1875, Mr. Rhys Davids gave us a very interest-
ing and almost complete summary of the work done by Pali philologists up to that
date, leaving very little for any cue eke to contribute." — Report of the Pluloloyical
Society for 1880.

IV. Buddhist Suttas, from the Pali. (8vo; Oxford-^

Clarendon Press, 1881.) 10s.

"Mr. Rhys Davids's excellent translation." — Athenisum.

" We thank Mr. Rhys Davids for his valuable contribution to the Sacred Boohs
of the East, and we trust th:tt we shall not long have to wait for another equally
interesting volume of Buddhist Suttas." —Academy.

Y. Vinaya Texts ; translated from the Pali by T. W.

Ehys Davids and Hermann Oldenherg. (8vo ; Oxford — Cla-
rendon Press. Vol. I. nearly ready; Vol. II. in the press;
Vols. III. and IV. in preparation.) Nos. IV, and V. form
part of " The Sacred Books of the East."

YI. The Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon ; with

an Introductory Chapter on tlie Coins and Measures in use
in India in the Time of Early Buddhism ; and a Supplementary
Chapter on the Date of the Buddha's Death. (Imp. 4to, with
a Photo-lithographic Plate ; London — Trubner & Co., 1877.)
lOs.

"Throughout the supplementary chapter, as in the whole work, we find acute
criticism and extensive learning united with caution in the drawing of conclusions,
and not a few incidental observations that are instructive also for a reader not
especially interested in this particular branch of numismatio inquiry." — Journal
of the German Asiatic Society.

YII. Three Inscriptions of Parakrama Bahu ; with fac-
simile Plates, the Text in Elu, Translation, and JS'otes. (8yo ;
London — Trllbner & Co., 1874.) Is. 6d.

YIII. Sigiri, the Lion Eock, near Pulastipura, Ceylon :

a Description and Account of the Ruins and Inscriptions there.
Together with the Pali Text of the 39th Chapter of the IMaha^
vaijsa, Translation, and Notes. (8vo ; London — Trubner,
1875.) l6'. 6d

IX. Two old Sinhalese Inscriptions. Elu Texts, Trans-
lation, and Notes. (8vo ; London — Triibner & Co., 1876.)
Is. 6(Z.

The above three Essays are reprinted from the Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society.

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"WILLIAMS & NORGATE.

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few errors, and adding a much more complete Index, which has been
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Royal 4to, sewed, J£3 nett,

Koran: The Qoran : with the Commentary of the

Iman Aboo Al-Qasin Malimood Bin O'Mar Al-Zamakhshari,
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Xassau Lees and Khadun Hosain and Abo al-Hayl Com-
plete iu six Parts or two Vols.

Olflenberf^, Dr. H. Buddha : his Life, his Doctrine,

and his Community. Translated fiom the German by W. Hoey,
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BOOKS IN PALI.

BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES IK PALI.
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The Yinaya Pitakam, one of the principal Buddhist
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history of Ceylon.

The study of Pali is in India raised to the level of that of Sanskrit,
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In the absence of text-books, the " Dipavamsa" is specially adapted for
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8vo, 21s.

The Milinda Paiiho. Being Dialogues between King

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Notes.

"A very interesting dialogue between Milinda and Nagasena." — Max Milller in
Chips, I.

"Next in order of interest should undoubtedly be named the 'Milindha Panha;
or, Questions of Menander.' Whatever be the origin of this remarkable work,
there can be no doubt of its great antiquity, for it exhibits a familiarity with
Greek names and places, and records a religious discussion between the Buddhist
divine Nagasena, and a 'Yona' king Milinda, who can be identified with cer-
tainty with the Bactrian king Menander."— CA/We^'s in Pali Dictionary.

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